Palace Hotel Tokyo, a 290-room heir to some of the city’s most exclusive real estate, opens 17 May in Marunouchi on a stunning, moat-side setting by the Imperial Palace.
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Not lost in translation: The new Palace Hotel Tokyo
mixes Japanese and French culture |
As the anchor to a USD1.2 billion mixed-use development, the hotel’s 10 new restaurants and bars include Japanese, Chinese and French dining venues with designs on Michelin stars. In a country not otherwise known for its spa culture, the hotel is cutting the ribbon on the first ever evian® SPA in Japan. And its ownership, management and service standards are Japanese through and through.
“There is only one Tokyo, and there will only be one experience like the Palace Hotel,” said Takashi Kobayashi, the company’s president. “From the Aji stones at our entrance to the linens in our guest rooms, from the omotenashi at first encounter to the general management, we’re celebrating an unfiltered appreciation of our country’s culture.”
Its 12 categories of accommodation range from deluxe rooms to suites that extend to 255 square metres. Most of the rooms feature open-style bathrooms with separate soaking tubs and showers, and more than half of the rooms and suites have open terraces and balconies. And for good reason. Every guest room in the house features views of Tokyo’s Imperial Palace gardens as well as the surrounding skyline beyond.
Each room’s decor invokes the hotel’s proximity to Tokyo’s natural splendour, from the leafy carpet motifs to the earthy mix of golds and creams. Nature notwithstanding, the rooms pay homage to modern exigencies with complimentary wireless and wired high-speed Internet access, 46-inch LCD TVs and Blue-ray/DVD/CD players.
Uniquely Japanese touches to the rooms include the 300-thread count Imabari bed linens and bath towels from Ehime prefecture, and Maruyama Nori teas manufactured in Tokyo’s Tsukiji district. The hotel’s published room rates start at £390 and climb to £5,500 for its premium suites.
Palace Hotel Tokyo has 10 restaurants and bars. “Our goal with each of these restaurants is not simply to complement our guests’ accommodation experience,” said Kobayashi “but to create several, new dining icons in this city - a constellation of opportunity, if you will.”
On the hotel’s sixth floor, the original Palace Hotel’s French restaurant, Crown, first opened in 1964, returns as a collaboration with Patrick Henriroux, who has maintained a two-star reputation at La Pyramide in Vienne, France for more than 10 years.
Occupying 1,200 square metres of space on the fifth floor, the hotel’s evian® SPA will be the first ever in Japan – and a future must for wellness in Tokyo. Its five treatment rooms, one spa suite and separate ladies’ and gentlemen’s relaxation lounge form the heart of the city’s most ambitious new spa. Its gentlemen’s spa area features a heated bath, reclining bath, cold plunge and dry sauna, and the ladies spa area includes a heated bath and marble sauna.
The hotel also claims prime frontage on Tokyo’s renowned Marunouchi business district as well as proximity to the Nihonbashi financial centre. Eight multi-purpose rooms comprise the hotel’s meeting facilities in addition to a formal boardroom that seats 28 and two smaller meeting rooms. The signature flourish in the main ballroom is a 7-metre tall by 22-metre wide window overlooking the Wadakura moat and the Imperial Palace gardens.
The new hotel succeeds two previous hotels, the Hotel Teito and Palace Hotel that occupied the same site from 1947 and 1961 respectively. Each was razed to make way for its successor.
