The Green Leaf Niseko Village

We chose this hotel for its ski-in ski-out location, which it has. However, it's in an area of Niseko that doesn't have any food options so for dining you need to take a very crowded shuttle bus or hire a private car/taxi and go to Hirafu. The rooms are extremely small by Western standards so if you're traveling with check-in size luggage and/or a ski bag, you won't have any floor space in the room. We ended up upgrading from 2 rooms to 2 suites --for more than double the price--at which point we could have stayed at the Ritz-Carlton. The beds and bedding are fine but the rest of the rooms are extremely dated (last renovated in the 80s?). Finally, my kids preferred to not share a bed and they charged us $200 to put bedding on the crappy couch in the living area. Finally, the breakfast is extremely crowded and stressful, the coffee machines work intermittently leading to very long lines, and the food is mediocre at best (wide selection but poor quality). I honestly hated it by the end of the trip.

This hotel is not up to usual Hilton standard and is a 3-star hotel at best. The customer photos on Tripadvisor are accurate although some of them are from the suite rooms not standard rooms. Very dated overall and had a grubby feel all round. Bathroom is tiny and towels are thin. No robes. The toilet paper is the cheapest I have seen anywhere- I don't think you can even buy that kind of paper in a UK supermarket! The restaurant is like a school canteen. No boot warmers in the ski lockers- this is fairly standard these days. Do not be misled by the description as being in the village. There is nowhere you can walk to and you are dependent on the shuttle bus, which is not very frequent. We saw some guests being denied entry to the bus so they had to wait for the next one and the driver was very rude. We stayed only 3 nights out of our planned 6 and Tarl, the complaints manager transferred us to the big Hilton hotel in Niseko. This was better but still rather dated. Overall the holiday was a massive disappointment and skiing in Japan is massively overrated compared to the big European resorts.

Great and helpful staff with booking buses, Cannot beat ski in and ski out location, peaceful, great nature views from the room, unbeatable morning breakfast buffet starting at 6:30 - we were thrilled with our stay. Yes the hotel is away from "noise and night life" but we actually loved that. The free hotel shuttle was easy to use and very on time - we loved all of it.