One of the last assignments I had when I was a resident of New York City—before I moved back to London—was a visit to Japan.
I have been very fortunate to travel somewhat widely, but Japan opened my eyes. It feels, at least to me, truly as a place apart.
China is Chinese, obviously, and Colombia is Colombian, but many things in those beautiful places feel familiar. The same is true of many other places, however much is different both culturally and scenically.
So it is with huge interest that I’m following the news this week that Japanese hotel chain Hoshino Resorts will open its first international property hopefully by the end of the year.
I stayed in two of its properties, Hoshinoya Kyoto and Hoshinoya Karuizawa. Both are superb, but the Kyoto property might just be my favorite hotel stay of all time (so far, I hope).
The hotel company has five properties under the Hoshinoya brand—its most luxurious offering—as well as 14 under its Kai brand and four within its Risonare brand. It also has several standalone properties.
The company began in 1904, when its main interest was silk. It opened its first hotel—a hot spring resort, known in Japanese as a ryokan—10 years later, became Hoshino Resorts in 1995 and created a real estate investment trust in 2013.
That first foray outside of Japanese airspace will be a 30-room ryokan-style property in Bali, Indonesia, overlooking the Pakerisan River in the Ubud area.
The Karuizawa property has guest privileges at a local hot springs but caters mostly to a skiing and eco-travel crowd, but the Kyoto property was probably the most Japanese thing I did on my visit to that remarkable nation.
How to translate that into assets in other countries will be a real challenge, and I look forward to seeing the results. Bali is the perfect place to start, as it has a culture and atmosphere travelers already can imagine, such as the images of tropical Bali displayed in travel brochures.
I hope to reach out to Hoshino for a regular article in our pages, and I will ask where they will next set their sights.
I hope it is somewhere you can go to or have to go to.
Guests reach the isolated Hoshinoya Kyoto by a short journey in a small, wooden, covered boat—there’s also a thin, walkable path to the property—along a wood-lined river, which adds to the sense of otherworldliness. Hotel staff dressed in traditional Japanese clothing meet you at the minute pier, and pretty soon the guest, too, is dressed in Japanese robes (as the alarming photo of this writer below shows).
Here I am dressed in traditional clothes at Hoshinoya Kyoto. (Photo: Terence Baker)
Its restaurant has a Michelin star. I cannot say if it deserves it, as I have nothing to compare what was a superb meal to anything else. I’ll leave that to restaurant critics. After all, despite British food having improved leaps and bounds, I am English and love Marmite.
The Japanese garden was peaceful.
Take my word for it, to stay there was to stay in a dream. Minutes ticked away in what felt like 10.
So, can the brand move to, say, Penzance, Cornwall, or Acadia National Park—or at least close to it—two places that I’d say have the ability to absorb a Hoshinoya.
Maybe its other brands would make the best start in destinations far from the feel of Japan or Bali?
I am excited to find out.
Email Terence Baker or find him on Twitter.
The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or its parent company, STR and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.