Been to this lovely resort 3 times (2 times in winter and once in summer) in last 2 years. Stayed with 9 years old son and wife, 6/7 days each time.
Hotel is clean, hygienic and taking all precautions keeping Covid in mind. Rooms are decent size, compared to the other hotels in Japan.
Good Kids club - my son loved it very much. In winter, kids can learn/do skiing and snowboarding. In summer, kids can play tennis, archery, flying trapeze etc. With kid going to the kids club everyday, both myself and wife had whole day to ourselves :) Good job Kids club staff!
Hotel also has daily family (e.g. sushi making) and individual indoor/outdoor activities e.g. cooking, trekking.
Food is fresh and delicious. Buffet style and has lots of variety. Menu changes slightly every day, couple of special dishes every day. Bar has decent selection of alcoholic/non-alcoholic beverages. Yakiniku restaurent has good selections of meat/seafood.
Evening shows are jaw-dropping. Hard to believe that all participants in the show, are actually hotel staff. Awesome performance (and hard work) by everyone !
Hotel also hosts some sort of ‘fun-fair’ or ‘festival’ in the evening, it has range of activities for guests to participate in. Circus performance and Taiko show (by locals) are not to miss.
Hotel provides free ski/snowboarding lessons. We took a few snowboarding lessons, teachers are great. Slopes are long and wide, though beginner slopes are bit narrow and flat. All guests get a personal locker for keeping all the gears - no need to return rental stuff everyday.
In summer, we enjoyed tennis (lessons), yoga, flying trapeze, archery, mountain biking and fitness classes. Trapeze was an unforgettable experience for me.
There is a large indoor swimming pool “Mina-Mina beach” few steps away from the hotel. Pool has artificial wave, kids simply love it. It also has onsen and shower.
All staff is very friendly and helpful. Sadly (and apologies) I don’t remember all the names but everyone made our stay comfortable and memorable - Brendon, Karim, James, Dina, Adi, Hitomi, Ruiari, Asim, Adam, Naoki, Carol, Kaji sensei, Sugar, Nicolej, Ayako, Eishi. Brendon was a great chief of village. Clayton is doing an excellent job keeping the same momentum.
I have been Club Med Kabira but this place simply rocks when comes down to the overall services/facilities/hospitality/friendliness. Overall a good place to have a stress free, relaxing and enjoyable holidays. We will be going back there for sure !!
There are few things which I believe hotel can do better.
1. Good wifi signal thru out the hotel, not just in theater or restaurant. Our room barely had a single bar. I reported this to the reception but not sure if any action was take.
2. Suggest not to combine different levels of snowboarding lessons into one. It does not work well and bit waste of time for everyone. Also may be good idea to pay attention to the participants, and then decide about Japanese or English speaking sensei.
3. Extra tennis court in high seasons or when there are many guests. Also put some time limit (45 mins or an hour) on using tennis court - no advance booking! On several occasions, we could not play tennis at all because both of the courts were fully used by same people for hours.
4. Would be good to have badminton and squash facilities