Conrad Tokyo – a review

On my most recent trip to Japan, Esther, her husband, and I stayed at the Conrad Tokyo for 2 nights, which I booked using the 2 free weekend night certificates from the signup bonus of the Citi Hilton Reserve card. Given the points rate of 95,000 HHonors points per night or the cash rate of ~¥100,000 a night during cherry blossom season, this was a great deal!

The Conrad is right at the Shiodome Tokyo Metro stop. If you have a JR Pass and don’t want to pay extra to take the subway, you can go to the JR Shinbashi station and take a short 5-8 minute walk on either the overhead sky bridges, or through several underground plazas. I recommend the overhead sky bridges, which you can access from the Karasumori exit, as they are less complicated and faster due to less staircases and people.

The Conrad’s location is also great, as it is within walking distance to Tsukiji Market (which if you want to see the tuna auction, you need to get there by 3:30am or so, so subways aren’t open then), the Hama Rikyu Gardens, and also has easy access to Odaiba (where I visited my friend’s booth at Anime Japan, at Tokyo Big Sight).

I got to the hotel somewhat early, around 10:30am. The entrance and lobby were gorgeous! Because it was sakura season, there was a potted live cherry tree right in the ground floor lobby, which was a really nice touch.

Ground floor lobby

Real cherry blossoms!

Check in lobby

As a Hilton Diamond member, I was offered an upgrade, but it would not be available until around 12:30pm. I chose to take the upgrade offer, so I dropped of my luggage and went to wander around the city for a few hours before coming back to our room. And the room was amazing! We were on the 36th floor, one floor below the executive lounge, with an amazing view. We had a City View instead of a Bay View, but I still thought the City View was pretty nice.

The hallway

The room

I received an amenity of some madeleines as a HHonors Diamond Member. One regular, and one matcha. They were really good! Also, as usual for Conrads, we also received a duck, 10th anniversary branded as it was the Conrad Tokyo’s 10th anniversary.

I actually picked the Conrad in anticipation that we would be trying to shove 3-4 people in the room. I knew this was totally doable because when I checked the floor plans for the Conrad, I noticed a giant window couch, which looked spacious enough to fit at least 1 extra person. And indeed, the actual window couch spans the entire window, is super comfy, and could probably sleep 2 people if needed.

I’m pretty sure the beds were full sized, not twins, as they were quite large. One weird thing about the room is that the bathroom blinds, as they either tilted so that people from the outside could look in, but would block light going out at night, or would tilt so that you couldn’t look in, but light would shine directly on the bed closest to the bathroom. Weird.

Welcome amenity of madeleines

Duck and toiletries

We took a little tour of the fitness center and swimming pool, in case we wanted to use it later. Everything was gorgeous! We were advised that the swimming pool gets a little crowded around 7am, so if I wanted to avoid that I should come at 8am. I did, and at that time, there was actually absolutely no one else using the swimming pool. The fitness center required some kind of tennis shoes/trainers, and they weren’t very tolerant of other shoe types, like sandals or boots, so I ended up skipping the gym as rental shoes would have cost at least $10, though I don’t remember the exact amount. I did swim a couple of laps in the pool though, and I really appreciated the length of it, and the fact that literally no one else was in it at the same time. The changing rooms also have private jacuzzis and wet/dry saunas, which was awesome.

The pool

Onto the lounge. The lounge is accessible via the 37th floor. Strangely, it seems as if there are no restrictions to go up to the 37th, nor are there any barriers to just walking into the lounge. How they enforce entry is that they ask you your room number, either after you are seated or if you are attempting to grab a drink out of the fridge. Since we had 3 people in the room when there was only supposed to be 2 people in the room, we did some interesting hijinks involving rotating people in and out of the lounge sneakily. The lounge seems like it was converted from a top floor residential suite. During the off hours, there’s only light snacks as well as juice, soda, and water available. I don’t really recommend going then as there’s really nothing compelling in the lounge at the time.

Unfortunately, we missed all the afternoon and evening lounge services, but we did manage to get breakfast both days, with the layout you can see below. The food was really good, with some dimsum from their Michelin starred dimsum restaurant downstairs, and also a custom cooked egg section, with daily specials.

Main buffet station

Fruit station

Soup, rice, and congee station

Some other random details: there’s usually live music in the lobby, so the lobby bar will have a cover charge on those nights. We went to go chill in the lobby on a Sunday night, so there was no live music and therefore no cover charge. I had a very expensive, but very good Moscow Mule.

The lobby bar

The chapel is very pretty!

Chapel

Esther stumbled across an interesting bridal dress display in the lobby.

Bridal dress display

My only complaints were with the WiFi internet access, while not limited in number of devices, was just not stable at all. It constantly would just stop working at different times of the day. Also, the lounge access process was quite strange – I would much rather have either key card entry, or to be checked at the entrance, not when I am already inside.

Anyways, the level of service, the comfort, convenience, and sheer amount of exuded luxury of the Conrad made me fall in love with this hotel. I’m planning on staying here again, but obviously on free night certificates or points!