We stayed at the ANA Crowne Plaza, Kobe and found all staff to be quite friendly, efficient and very helpful. Unlike our dreadful experience at the Park Hyatt, Tokyo, the ANA Kobe is VERY welcoming to families and foreign tourists. The rooms were huge with outstanding views across Kobe city to the Inland Sea. The hotel is very convenient to Shin-Kobe station (Shinkansen) which is less than 100metres from the hotel via the covered walkway.

As we arrived in Kobe at 11:00am by Shinkansen we decided to leave our bags at the hotel until checkin (3:00pm) time whilst we explored Kobe. Without us asking, the lovely ANA staff offered us early checkin (no charge) at 11:00am as the room was available! Additionally
they offerred us an upgrade to a much bigger room for only Y3000 which we took.

We really enjoyed our stay at the ANA Crowne Plaza, Kobe and would definitely recommend it to others especially families and would stay again without second thought!

This is a very well run hotel. On arrival you can walk from the shinkansen station over the small footbridge to the hotel. Rooms are large by Japanese standards. If you book a standard double and there is one or two of you, the rooms may be smaller than the picture on the web site( a double bed against one wall) but there is still room for chairs, a table and a big desk. The view is wonderful – either facing the cable car or looking out over the shinkansen station and Rokko mountain. The hotel is spacious with lots of places to sit around.
The pool is a big bonus – it is free but they charge you a locker fee for the towel and bathing cap.( 525 yen before 10 am, double that after.) It’s 20 metres and great for a workout to get rid of jetlag. Underneath the hotel is a small shopping centre with a whole array of shops and small restaurants- and some have English menus. Leave the shopping centre at level 1 and you find the path to the cable car which takes you up to the herb garden and amazing view of the port. Go down one further level to the street, and you will find the Loop tourist bus stop.
Breakfast is expensive and I didn’t eat in the hotel. There are local places available. We walked down Flower road towards the main JR station for five minutes and found a very friendly breakfast café on the corner with a few antiques and second hand books outside ( there is a seven-eleven on the other side of the road). It looks unpromising from the outside and may also look closed, but inside is efficient organisation, wooden tables and a dining bar and a menu that includes ham and eggs for 500 yen and Vienna coffee. From there you can walk one street away from flower road and there is a side road with lots of local restaurants – I went to “Chicken da Kitchen” who serve a variety of chicken skewer dishes with delicious marinades and has a wonderful Indian waitress who speaks perfect English. Further down this side road, you might be lucky and find Holly’s open – it’s a bar restaurant with about seven tables and live trad jazz music. When I visited, there was an Japanese- American combo playing.

Overall an excellent stay. It loses one star for location - just a bit to far away from central Kobe but you will enjoy staying here

you should take the opportunity to reserve room at Executive Level... it is really worth the money

great hotel- very clean, nice big rooms. Staff helpful and unobtrusive. great gym and pool (you have to wear skin cap for latter). Its very close to "shin kobe"- the train station you need to get the fast intercity trains north (tokyo) and south (hiroshima). Its about 1.2 km from kobe centre (sanyominia) but this is an easy downhill walk. The return jurney, being uphill, is a bit more challenging in any heat;but if you're relatively healthy you can do it even with your cases from the main train station. Alternatively take a taxi (stand just outside hotel)either way for around 660 yen (£5). It was a nice quiet hotel- good walled thick rooms, good airconditioning, service. the hotel is in a kind of complex with the bottom floors given over to shops and a few japanese/korean eateries. The only dowside is that this means taking 2 lifts (one to the foyer, one then to your room). overall i would recommend it for relatively fit buisness and leisure travellers