Palace Hotel Tokyo Aims to Bring New Brand of Luxury to Japanese Capital

By Alex Girda, Associate Editor

The city of Tokyo gained a new addition to its hospitality market with the opening of the Palace Hotel Tokyo. Located on one of the best historic sites in the Japanese capital, the 290-room venue is trying to capitalize on having luxury services in a luxurious location. Placed just across a moat from the Imperial Palace gardens and offering impressive city views, the hotel is the centerpiece of a $1.2 billion mixed-use development.

The project includes a variety of high-end dining venues and bars, as well as top-tier guest facilities and access to the country’s first evian SPA. The Imperial Palace gardens offer a 37,000-square-foot green patch in the center of one of the world’s most populated cities, but benefits from its Marunouchi business district address, a feature that developers hope will draw a crowd of business executives.

The 23-story structure was designed by architectural firm Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei Inc., a company responsible for a great number of office buildings and facilities in the business district. The hotel inherited the setting from two other hospitality structures, Hotel Teito and Palace Hotel, both of which were demolished in order to make way for their successor.

Accommodations include 278 guestrooms and 12 suites, divided into 12 categories, with floorplans ranging from 480 to 2,700 square feet. Rooms will feature LCD TVs hooked up to Blu-ray/DVD/CD players, while wireless and wired high-speed Internet will be available throughout. Materials and patterns used in the rooms’ design are evocative of the hotel’s historic location and heritage; the interior was designed by GA Design International, led by Terry McGinnity. Fitness facilities, a keycard-accessible 24-hour business center, an indoor swimming pool, eight different meeting venues and an in-building wedding chapel are also part of the Palace Hotel Tokyo’s comprehensive amenity package.