MarcSantaCruz
Google
Hoya has three sections: the hotel, the old cabins, and the new villas. We stayed in the villas, which were brand new in Dec 2023. Some of the staff has basic English. My partner is a native speaker, so we did not have language issues. The hotel is about a 5 minute drive from the train station and town. They have a free shuttle, though a taxi is only about NT$150. ||I'll get the bad part out now. My main issue with our room is the shower hot water. As I said, the villas are brand new and maybe they will have this fixed by the time you get there. We ran out of hot water several times and when we had hot water the temperature was not too stable. This was the only negative about Hoya. ||There are a few minor annoyances about the villa room we had. The bedroom needs nightstands. We took a side table from the other room and used a chair for nightstands. There are no usb ports, so be sure to have your own adapters. There is not much storage space for the size of the room and only a small closet/hanger area.||The in-room spa worked fine, but took a long time (maybe 6-8 minutes) to get the hot water. The owner said that in the evening after a certain time, they flush the pipe with clean water to reduce corrosion, so I think that is what happened to us. Once the water flushed and we got hot springs water, there was not a problem.||Hoya has public hot springs plus in-room soaking tubs. If you want a public pool experience, Hoya is a good choice. Butterfly Valley Resort is another. You can use the pools even if not staying at Hoya. There are also steam and dry saunas available near the cold plunge pool (it's easy to miss them in the line of private rooms there). Hoya has a cold pool, a warm pool (35C) and middle pool (38C) and a hot pool (41C). The temperatures varied by about 1C. There is also a kiddie pool and a swimming pool. The saunas were not especially hot (maybe low 80's C).||The public hot springs area has a changing and shower rooms plus a handful of lockers. The path from the hot springs entrance to the changing rooms could use a hand rail and is not easy for someone with mobility issues.||Hoya has a dinner service, which you need to reserve with them ahead of time. We ate there one night and it was good. It is a few limited choices.||The breakfast buffet is quite nice, with a few western choices and standard Taiwanese choices too. You might want to ask if tour buses are coming through and get to the buffet early if so. There were 2 busses there one morning and it was overfull when we arrived for breakfast. We had to wait a bit for them to clear out and the staff to re-stock the buffet.||Villas are two floors. There is no elevator. The stairs are pretty manageable, as long as you can handle the luggage.||The wall heater is pointed right at the beds. It can be a little annoying when it goes on and off. There is a function on the remote called swing, which will adjust the louvers up and down. If you would just them in the upper position, it doesn’t blow right on the bed. You can use the Google Translate app and snap a picture of the remote to see what all the buttons do.||I think they expect you to take off your shoes outside the Villa rooms, but they don’t provide a bench or seating, or place to put your shoes outside the room. When we looked at the cabins across the street, they had benches and shoe storage outside the rooms.||The villa floors are a wood grain tile, so they do get cold. You will want to have your own indoor slippers. The provided slippers are small for a western men’s foot.
