Review of Yufuin Gettouan 4*

Gettouan Yufuin Location 3/5, Service 4/5, Food 4/5, Cleanliness 4/5 tl;dr: Overall good Ryokan, but will or will not revisit under circumstance. -pros- We booked the most expensive rooms ($800) and the staff that personally took care us did a very good job (Irina-san). We booked 3 rooms, the rooms are basically small houses. The photos you see on the webs make it look bigger than the actual thing, but it is still plenty of space. They separate standard booking and more expensive booking, with the latter getting more use of facility and better service. Lots of heating systems in the house. The Ryokan is located slightly up in the mountain, so there is really nothing to walk around. Food was kaiseki type. It was fairly good, not great but it was better than we expected. After 3 days of stay I have a feeling that this place is very good if you book a luxury type plan. The stuff/service that you get from it is very good, but the standard facilities/service feel very normal to not worth. I would return to this place with top luxury reservation, but absolutely not revisit with standard reservation. -cons- I would have given this place a 5/5, and recommend it to others if not for the disgustingly obnoxious communication before visit. It was one of the worst experience. Contacting them took forever to get a reply, then with reply that dont give you any answer (dont know why some Japan hotels do this). When I made reservations, they had my booking agent called me to ask for our details. I told them I would let them know once our schedule is confirmed, but they did it once again anyway… I found it frustrating that they could demand our details but we could barely get an email reply from them. I can speak Japanese, so I switch to Japanese and got a better result. But even so the replies took days and unclear. I almost cancel the reservation just because of this. I mean contacting them is this bad, how will the actual thing be? After long hard consideration I gave them a try anyway. Eventually things seemed to settled, all questions got answered. Everything seemed to fine until 1 day before we travel, our Agent called again asking for our details!? I was speechless. I called them and told them to talk to the staff I had been contacting. Until the very last minute they didnt seem to get a hold of our info, even though I had told them multiple times. It was the worst pre-experience of an accommodation visit I ever had. They say they can arrange pick up from Yufuin station, but dont count on it. They try to arrange it to fit their schedules and not yours. Standard accommodation feels mediocre, I recommend booking luxury type only, anything below is not worth it.