Richard J.
Yelp
I spent the nigth here with wife and daughter last saturday.
I reserved by phone the day before and that experience was flawless. 5-star customer booking experience.
First impression at arrival: this is a top class hotel. Even the parking garage got upgraded over the past years. The Okura is beautiful, it has world class restaurants, it has a big spacious entry and breathtaking foyer architecture. I reserved an executive suite by phone. I was promised a separate sitting area. Turned out to be a big hotel room on the 19th (exec) floor, but it was not a suite. Beautiful room, but just not a suite. That is 3 out of 5, because the price I paid was absolutely suite level - I stay in international hotels about 100 nights per year and this was the most expensive 24 hours in the past 2 years.
The executive lounge has the size of 2-3 rooms and offered afternoon snacks, but there was nothing between breakfast and lunch but fruit (banana's, pears, apples). The afternoon snacks included delicious small Dutch kroketten and that makes up for a lot. Very nice staff too.
In this class of hotel, the devil is in the details and there were too many details not in order.
A few examples: an empty, even dented KyoKo tea bottle in the minibar.
The curtains were closed when we came in and it was not immediately clear they are on a remote control, but we figured that out quickly. The TV remote did not work well, bad batteries I guess. There is a Nespresso machine with a choice of capsules.
The bathroom is beautiful, spacious and the toilet has Japanese gadget level 5/5.
The orientation lights did not go off and a tech assistant, later a real electrician, had to come to the room to fix it. Which did not work, in the end these orientation lights were disabled, it took not very long but it was late in the evening. In the end it was handled well.
The spa/health club: looked great, friendly staff. Unfortunately, staff called 30 minutes before a scheduled treatment to say the masseuse got delayed due to traffic. Traffic - on a sunday morning, seriously? We could watch half the Amsterdam traffic from our 19th floor corner room and I can tell you - there was none. No apology. The masseuse was good in the end, so 3 out of 5.
Nice quiet pool with jacuzi.
The choice at breakfast is of a mid class hotel. Could be better. I would have expected more Japanese choices, like different noodles, fish, udon etc. Also more choice of cheeses and meats for the locals. Although it was not busy at breakfast, the staff was not paying a lot of attention. An order for two capucchinos was not recorded correctly and the waitress had to come back to ask what we ordered. When my wife got her capucchino after waiting too long, it was cold. Come on, that is unnecessary. The cook suggested pancakes for my daughter (I like that he was actively monitoring the guests and came up with suggestions proactively). The pancakes turned out to be one small 5' one. I don't understand that, just make a few (Dutch style) and put them on a plate.
Quality: good, but nothing special.
The overall experience lacked apologies from the frontdesk for the various nuisances we reported.
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Update 5/15
I was contacted by the hotel GM with a very friendly, detailed and well written response to my review, offering apologies and explanations about initiatives that will be taken to further improve quality. That is superb customer service and I have therefore changed my rating to 4/5 from 3/5.