A favorite destination for visiting dignitaries, the 126-year-old hotel led the pack in a recent J.D. Power survey.
Tokyo has no shortage of luxury hotels, but its most storied destination just picked up a nod for customer service excellence. J.D. Powers’s “Japan Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study,” which has been running for the past 10 years, surveys hotel guests about the ease of making reservations, the quality of hotel amenities, and several other factors (the criteria can be viewed on the J.D. Powers site).
This is the first year that the Imperial Hotel ranked highest in the ¥35,000 and above category, with guests praising the Imperial’s services, facilities, ease of making reservations, and more. This was the first year that the hotel took the top position, and the eighth year in a row that it ranked first in the Japanese Customer Satisfaction Index (JCSI), which was based on a survey of some 120,000 respondents. According to a press release, the Imperial Hotel was the only hotel to have ranked first for eight years running, and doing far better than other luxury hotels in Tokyo.
The Imperial Hotel was founded as a small, three-story building in 1890, and was replaced in 1923 by an iconic structure designed by the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright; the hotel was then rebuilt in 1968, and has been a draw for celebrities, politicians, and world leaders since the Meiji period.
