Park Hyatt Kyoto review: Heart Score 8.7

Service

With only 70 rooms, this feels more like a private guesthouse than a hotel. You don't stand at a desk to check in. You're shown to a sofa in the Living Room, handed a glass of Champagne, and someone sits down with you to talk through your plans. By the second morning the staff know your name and what you did yesterday.

It's the small, thoughtful things I love here. Come back soaked from a rainy day at the temples and a shoe dryer appears at your door. Mention an allergy and there's a menu written for you at breakfast. Housekeeping comes twice a day, and at turndown there are chocolates and a little piece of origami, which children adore.

Not everything runs smoothly. Breakfast service can drag when the Bistro is full, and housekeeping sometimes runs late in a busy week. Don't count on a late checkout either. The hotel is nearly always full, so if you need the room until the afternoon, arrange it before you arrive.

Rooms

The rooms are calm and very well made. They're all pale tamo wood and soft light, with almost nothing on the walls. Even the entry rooms are a generous 485 square feet for Japan, with a double vanity, a deep soaking tub and a rain shower in a Japanese wet room, and Le Labo in the bathroom. They're beautifully soundproofed, so I sleep well here. The sofa is harder than it looks, and bring an adaptor, because the sockets are Japanese.

The view is the thing to get right. This is a low building tucked into a hillside, so what you see from the window varies enormously. Some of the standard and garden view rooms look at a wall or a roof. The Garden Terrace rooms have their own tiny Japanese garden, which is lovely and silent, but there's no long view and the terrace seats aren't comfortable enough to linger on.

The room I'd book is a view room on a high floor, facing the pagoda. Waking up to the Yasaka Pagoda over the tiled rooftops is the whole reason to stay here, and it's even better at dusk, when the pagoda is lit up. Not every view room faces it squarely, so ask us to request one that does. I wouldn't pay these rates for a room with no view and hope for an upgrade, because the hotel is too full for that to be likely.

Food and drink

Breakfast is the meal to plan around, and specifically the Japanese one. It's made by Kyoyamato, the Michelin-starred kaiseki restaurant that shares the grounds, and it arrives as a set of lacquer boxes with grilled miso fish, rice and a dozen small, perfect things. It has to be reserved the day before, it does sell out, and there's a supplement of about $25 even when breakfast is included in your rate. I think it's worth it. The Western breakfast is a small buffet plus dishes cooked to order, and I'd have the French toast.

Yasaka is the signature restaurant, a teppanyaki counter cooked with French technique, with the pagoda framed in the window behind the chef. Book the early seating so you catch the sunset. The seven-course dinner is about 33,000 yen a person, roughly $220, and I think it's one of the best hotel dinners in Kyoto. It's dinner only on most days, and children under ten aren't seated at the counter.

Kohaku, the bar next door, has the same view and only about ten seats. Staying in the hotel doesn't get you a seat, so reserve it when you book your room. Kyoyamato itself is a grand, formal kaiseki dinner in an old wooden house in the garden, at well over $300 a person. For an ordinary lunch or supper the Kyoto Bistro is fine and no more, and I'd eat out. You're a short walk from Gion.

Setting

This is the best location in Kyoto for a first visit. The hotel sits right on Ninenzaka, the stone-paved lane that climbs to Kiyomizu-dera, with Kodai-ji next door and Gion and Yasaka Shrine ten minutes' walk down the hill. The building is so low and quiet that most people walk straight past it.

By day those lanes are packed. Step out at eleven in the morning and it's shoulder to shoulder. The reason to stay here is what happens at either end of the day. At six in the morning and after eight at night the crowds are gone, and you have the old streets and the pagoda almost to yourself. I think that's worth more than any hotel facility.

You do give things up. There's no pool. The bathhouse has a hot bath, a cold plunge, a sauna and a steam room, and it's just what you want after a day on your feet, but it's small, and so is the gym. The hotel climbs the hillside, so getting to some rooms means changing lifts and a fair walk along corridors. There's no subway nearby either. Kyoto Station is ten minutes by taxi, and taxis can be slow to reach the door when the lanes are busy, so allow extra time on the day you leave.

Value

This is one of the most expensive hotels in Japan. In the quiet months, January, February and the heat of summer, rooms start at around $1,100 a night. In cherry blossom season and the autumn colour weeks of November the same room is $1,800 to $2,500, and a pagoda view adds a few hundred dollars on top.

What you're paying for is the address and the view, far more than the facilities. Hotel The Mitsui has bigger baths and often costs less, and the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton both have pools. If the pagoda and those empty morning lanes are what you came to Kyoto for, I think it's worth it for two or three nights. If they aren't, it's hard to justify.

Booking through an advisor helps here. Breakfast for two and a hotel credit usually come with the same rate, along with an upgrade when one is available, and at these prices that takes some of the sting out.

Who it suits

I'd send couples, honeymooners and first-time visitors who want old Kyoto on the doorstep and are happy to spend their days out walking. If you want a thermal spring bath and a calmer part of town, I'd book Hotel The Mitsui. Families who need a pool will be happier at the Four Seasons Kyoto or the Ritz-Carlton. And if what you want is a retreat in the forest away from the crowds, look at Aman Kyoto, or Hoshinoya out in Arashiyama.