Nagoya has a new high-rise hotel with some of the best sweeping views in the city. Without a doubt, it will delight travelers with money to burn on its larger rooms and suites — while confounding others looking for affordable yet high-class stays.
Open from February 2024, the Royal Park Hotel Iconic Nagoya is a four-star hotel located adjacent to the city’s two-kilometer-long Hisaya-odori Park and steps away from Sakae Station. The latest addition to a growing chain of high-class hotels, it occupies the seventh and 24th through 32nd floors of the 33-story Chunichi Building, itself finishing a full remodel scheduled for completion on March 23, just days before the city’s cherry blossoms are scheduled to reach full bloom.
You won’t be able to spy many of those delicate flowers from the hotel’s top-floor rooms, but that doesn’t mean the views disappoint. All rooms at the Royal Park Hotel feature floor-to-ceiling windows with even the smallest accommodations offering commanding (yet very well soundproofed) views of Japan’s often overlooked fourth-largest city.
It’s obvious that the details mattered to the hotel's designers. Recessed lighting full of warm glows abounds across the property, and larger suites make use of natural boulders as accent pieces to hold up tables and other furnishings. In both name and color scheme, the hotel’s bar, Sou, takes inspiration from the particular shade of azure dye traditionally used by Nagoya-area textile craftspeople.
This isn’t the hotel to skimp on, however (more on that in a bit). If money is no object, either the two-floor, 166-square-meter Maisonette Suite (¥500,000 or about $3,330 per night) or the 89-square-meter Iconic Suite with corner bedroom windows (¥400,000 or about $2,670 per night) will come as close to earning those prices as any hotel room can. Smaller rooms, all of which are split across three of the building’s top four floors, offer plainer decor but will still net you the same stunning views, comfortable mattresses and excellent service from the hotel’s Japanese- and English-speaking staff.
However, all of those strengths of the Royal Park Hotel Iconic Nagoya put into great relief its major, if qualified, weakness: the tea box-inspired island cabinet found in the two-person Superior Twin rooms. While the spacious armoires found throughout other rooms also evoke chabako (tea box) stylings, those rooms offer enough room for rectangular fixtures. In the smaller Superior Twin rooms, the cylindrical cabinets contain multiple compartments holding the room’s refrigerator, a Balmuda electric kettle, various amenities — and the sink.
Put simply, it’s a baffling design choice for a hotel that reaches for excellence in all other areas. Lifting the “lid” of the chabako reveals the faucet and vanity mirror, which means anyone exiting from the bathroom must enter the main living area to wash their hands. If you’re any kind of germaphobe, you’ll always have to leave the golden lid open (thereby depriving the small room of one of its few flat surfaces) or be content to lift the not inconsiderably weighted cover each time you need a scrub.
Also, this chabako island faces the room's spacious window as well as the bed under it. If you’re traveling with a companion and value a little privacy in your morning or evening routines — brushing teeth, drying and styling hair or applying or removing makeup — you may need to be comfortable with doing so all while staring down your partner. Rooms do come with simple dividers (sheer curtains in some rooms, opaque pull-down screens in others), but this feels less like a solution and more like a Band-Aid pasted over the problem.
There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose — you may enjoy the novelty of this chabako furniture where I did not, and for one-night stays at the right price, perhaps it can be overlooked. Still, I can’t imagine it was the only solution available to the problem of how to make the best use of limited space. It’s a balancing act Japan’s innumerable bijiho (small yet super efficient business hotels) have been performing for decades, and it’s also one the Royal Park Hotel excels in addressing in other areas: On either side of the bed in the Superior Twin rooms sit what look to be beige walls — one conceals a small dresser; the other, the room’s TV and a selection of premium teas.
There are apparently a few other wrinkles needing ironing out, too. As of the time of writing, attempting to book a room directly through the hotel in English redirects you to rooms for the chain’s property in Tokyo’s Shiodome neighborhood (the Japanese portal works without issue).
In short, the Royal Park Hotel Iconic Nagoya feels ready to deliver top-quality stays. If your budget isn’t as lofty as the Chunichi Building, however, consider elsewhere.
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