Toyoko Inn Kyoto Biwako Otsu

It was good to have a system where the cleaning staff could hang extra towels on the doorknobs without entering the room. The cleaning seems to be on the fourth day. The free breakfast was more varied than I had imagined and the content changed every day. However, other customers had told the staff that they would be running out of side dishes and had them added, so I asked them to add more when there was no bread, but they flatly refused. But to the other guests, I saw that the other staff had served the bread out of the kitchen and personally handed it to them. Why do staff respond differently? There is only one elevator, so allow plenty of time.

Very nice stay in Otsu. The hotel is around 12 min walking from Otsu station. The standard room is small but the price is acceptable. It includes free breakfast that it's being served in the lobby. Hotel staff is very friendly. I would stay here again.

This hotel's location is very much a compromise, two train stops from Kyoto, two train stops away from the (very interesting) hilltop temple complex of Hieizan, and not far from Otsu JR station or lake Biwa, while still not exactly convenient for travelling or offering any lake views at all. With hindsight, and considering the fact that Japanese cities (including Kyoto) are usually hectic, Otsu proved a refreshingly relaxed and calm base, and I would stay in this hotel again (which this time I only did because I couldn't find a room in Kyoto). The Toyoko Inn chain obviously enforces a very high level of brand consistency, when it comes to breakfast, however, they do seem to allow a limited range of local diversity, even within the same time of the year and the same area of Japan, so Toyoko's (Japanese style) breakfast is, unlike Toyoko's guestrooms, not always exactly the same. I found breakfast at this Toyoko slightly below the branch average, i.e. very good but one can get a fractionally better breakfast at other Toyoko's. The staff is very attentive and I appreciated having a window with a cityscape view, instead of a view of the solid wall of another building two meters away as it is often the case in Toyoko Inn branches.