My standard hotel reviews include a breakdown by the following topics. Feel free to skip to whichever section you find most interesting.
- Highlights
- Lobby & Check-in
- Room
- Hotel Space / Ambiance
- Food & Drink
- Fitness
- Miscellaneous
Highlights: The Prince Gallery Tokyo Kioicho, a Luxury Collection Hotel
Here’s to my second international review!
This may very well be the best hotel experience I have received. An upgrade to a Kioi suite, amazing breakfast, excellent club lounge, great service, and a fantastic ambiance here in the Prince Gallery Tokyo. This continues my Japan trip with another top-of-the-line hotel. Highlights include the amazingly delicious breakfast, of course the great service, and a club lounge – with complimentary alcohol and decent food! You can find reviews of the hotel here (click Prince Gallery Tokyo Kioicho) and more information on booking Prince Gallery Tokyo Kioicho here (click view deal).
Lobby & Check-in
I emailed beforehand, as I applied my suite night award to hopefully confirm an upgrade for my anniversary. They offered a corner room, but granted us the Kioi suite! Check-in was smooth, with attendants again escorting us and our luggage from taxi to reception, then to our room to share all the pertinent details. Check-in had the option of points or a local welcome amenity, which turned out to be a pair of very nicely designed chopsticks. The lobby is very large, with plenty of seating area, past a lovely view of the Tokyo skyline and stairs to a hip hotel bar down below.
Room $2,000 Kioi Suite
A reception agent and the luggage attendant showed us to our room, past multiple layers of secured doors requiring keycard access.
And what a room it is! The Kioi Suite was a very, very nice upgrade, with over a thousand square feet of living space. The hallway splits the main suite area of bed, bathroom, and living area, with another, separate, living or working space! Beautifully done shower and tub in the nice bathroom, with lovely swan towel designs on the bed made for excellent touches. I was very impressed, also with the corner views of Tokyo and various parks. The suite also had another separate half bathroom, also equipped with the fun Japanese washlet.
It was too much for just the two of us, so I recommend bringing friends over to experience and enjoy the place as well.
Hotel Space / Ambiance
The Prince Gallery Tokyo is located on the 30th through 36th floors of the mixed use development of residential, office, commercial, hotel, and leisure space that is Tokyo Garden Terrace. It is very upscale, and caters most likely to business travelers and wealthy tourists. For a mere 21,500 Starpoints, it was definitely a steal.
Food & Drink: Breakfast
Breakfast can either be had at the Club Lounge or 36th floor restaurant, which was the staff’s recommendation. Per my email with their service staff:
Our SPG Platinum members can have anything from our breakfast menu. We have All You Can Eat, Continental Breakfast, American Breakfast, Gallery Breakfast, Japanese Breakfast, and French Toast. You can also have breakfast at our Club Lounge.
The breakfast was amazing, with the lady getting a traditional Japanese breakfast and me adding on fresh juice and sliced mango to the American style breakfast. Our breakfast would have easily cost over $100, but thanks to Platinum Status we got it complimentary!
Food & Drink: Club Lounge
There was so much I had to break this out into another section. The club lounge was available for guests, especially those with Platinum Status and/or the Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card. Practically always open for something, it hosts afternoon tea, hors d’oeuvres, and breakfast. I enjoyed the afternoon tea, snacks, and cocktail hour, with free premium alcohol for guests (Single-Barrel Jack Daniels Whiskey!).
Fitness
This gym had a similar experience to that of the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, however the locker rooms were not as nice, only having lounge beds and not massage chairs or snacks. Still, the gym was quite interesting, as it was the first I’ve seen to have monitors on every machine to count reps and exertion. Certainly motivating to hit a goal or force yourself to work harder! The pool also had a small hot tub area.
Please note that Japan, like most Asian countries, is very particular about shoes indoors, and thus in the locker rooms you are highly encouraged, sometimes required, to wear indoor slippers.
Miscellaneous
Hands down one of the best hotel experiences I have had and I look forward to going back to Prince Gallery Tokyo. Paying a mere 21,500 Starpoints, for something like a $2,000 suite and $100+ breakfast gets me a valuation in the 10! Cpp range, which is unheard of. Of course, they upgraded me due to my status and suite night award, as well as my anniversary request, but it would still have been an amazing experience regardless. I appreciated their making things work beforehand, via email, and I provided them a thank you certificate for their efforts.
Unfortunately, due to the recent Starwood 2017 Revaluations the Prince Gallery Tokyo has been upgraded to a category 7 hotel, which I expect to cost between 25,000 and 30,000 Starpoints. Highly problematic, as it would be hard to justify a 25-50% increase in cost.
Upon further review, I was informed this property will cost between 30,000 and 35,000 Starpoints depending on low or high season. This makes it significantly more expensive than the 21,500 Starpoints I paid for this stay. Maybe this will be a once in a lifetime stay for me, but I certainly hope to come back as soon as I can.
3/20/17 Edit
I also want to call attention to a classic example of their superb service quality. When I let the lobby associates know where I was going, they escorted me to the elevator, radioed a bellman to greet me at the ground floor and informed him of my destination. He then guided me in the right direction and explained, with a gentle smile, bow, and wave, how to reach the correct train station. Simply amazing and not expected. I am not used to this level of service, so it took a bit to get acclimated.
Stay tuned for the other hotel reviews of my amazing Japan trip! You’ll be able to find them all on my TravelUpdate page.
Featured Image is the cute swan towels that they arranged on our Kioi Suite King Bed.
This post contains an affiliate link for my Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card to earn 35,000 points after initial spend. You can find reviews of the hotel here (click Prince Gallery Tokyo Kioicho) and more information on booking Prince Gallery Tokyo Kioicho here (click view deal). Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links which, should you click through and/or make a purchase, grant me a commission. Also, I only post in the best interest of my readers. Lastly, thank you for supporting my blog and my travels.
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you are a sucker for paying $2000 for this. like a true sucker. a bathtub with a window and an american breakfast. you could have had that for 300 in tokyo. but hey thanks for your report about warmed up waffles for your 2000 experience, sucker.
i coulda got this for 350usd or 45000 marriot points, and instead of the lounge you could have purchased a bunch of chu hi varieties from the family mart and a bottle of whiskey for like 30usd then just wandered to the izakaya or ramen bar and had a fun night instead of hanging out in a lounge. but hey go you.
Nice review and nice slideshow viewer! It looks like you got a great value, and the hotel seems to pay attention to details. The welcome amenity chopsticks? (That’s neat). Totally random, but I wonder if the towel swan is only folded for the Kioi suite or if the hotel folds different towel animals for standard rooms too. Curious, though I’m guessing it’s probably not the standard.
Thanks for your comment and for reading! Not sure on the towel swan – I thought it a nice touch, but I’d need more data points to compare. So far I’ve only seen a swan and an elephant, but it’s a cute trick! Unfortunately due to the category change I doubt I’ll be back anytime soon.