Hyatt Place Kyoto Review: The Best Value Hotel in Kyoto?
If you’re planning on visiting the famous city of Kyoto, you may already know that finding a hotel is easily one of the most stressful parts of planning the trip. With so many options spread across different parts of the city, choosing the right hotel for your travel can feel extremely overwhelming.
Luckily, some familiar hotel chains offer excellent properties across Kyoto, including one of our favorites, Hyatt Hotels. While Hyatt has multiple properties in Kyoto, including the particularly flashy Park Hyatt Kyoto, one that often goes under the radar of potential visitors is Hyatt Place Kyoto.
A view of Kyoto from Arashiyama Forest
Hyatt Place is not normally one of the Hyatt brands that inspires images of luxury, but the hotel standards in Japan are substantially higher than in the US for these properties. Therefore, it raises the question:
Is Hyatt Place Kyoto worth considering for your next trip to Kyoto?
In this article, we will give our full review from our most recent stay to help inform you if it is the right option for you!
With the background out of the way, let’s jump into the review:
Hyatt Place Kyoto Review
Price & Value
By far, the most attractive thing about Hyatt Place Kyoto is the nightly room price. Hyatt is generally known for charging exorbitant prices (upwards of $1000+ per night) for Japan-based properties, especially during busy periods (such as March-May). The other Kyoto-based Hyatt, Park Hyatt Kyoto, frequently charges upwards of $2000+ per night!
However, Hyatt Place Kyoto is one of the few exceptions to this trend. While not a particularly luxurious property, it is one of the most consistently cheap Hyatt properties in Japan, often going for as little as ~$125 or 8,000 World of Hyatt points.
If the quoted cash price of your stay at Hyatt Place Kyoto is less than $200, we recommend just paying the cash rate and saving your points for more aspirational redemptions, like Alila Kothaifaru Maldives.
While we’ll get into what you get at Hyatt Place Kyoto, the value this hotel provides with its location and quality beats out any other Hyatt hotel in the country. Unfortunately, this hotel was moved up a Hyatt category in 2025, resulting in it being slightly more expensive to book with points; however, we still think it provides excellent value.
Score: 5.0/5.0
Location
Hyatt Place Kyoto is located in the center of the city, just south of the Kyoto Imperial Palace. While there are not too many major attractions in this area, it is easy to get to areas like the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest and the Gion district.
However, one of the major benefits of Hyatt Place Kyoto’s location is that it is directly on top of the Marutamachi Metro Station. This isn’t even hyperbole—the hotel entrance is a 5-second walk from the entrance to the Metro station, which is only a few stops away from Kyoto Station. It’s hard to overstate how convenient having the metro this easily accessible is, as it lets you get all over the city at a moment’s notice. There is even a train that goes directly from Marutamachi to Nara!
The hotel also has several convenience stores and a variety of both restaurants and Izakayas in the nearby area. However, if you are looking for a more authentic Japan experience, this location is not likely to provide it, as many hotels in the area largely cater to foreigners. As a result, you are going to hear more English in this area than elsewhere in the city (and almost universally while you’re in the hotel).
Score: 4.9/5.0
Rooms
Our room at Hyatt Place Kyoto had all the basics you’d expect and nothing more.
While the rooms are much smaller than some of the more expensive Hyatt options in Kyoto (Hyatt Regency Kyoto, Park Hyatt Kyoto), there is still a full king bed, a nice TV, a bathroom w/Japanese toilet, and a seating area to cover the essentials. However, while everything in the room felt high quality and well laid out, don’t expect the room to have much else.
While it shouldn’t be a surprise given the small size of the room, storage space is also limited; for longer stays, you would likely have to somewhat live out of your suitcase (not great for those who like to fully unpack at each hotel).
Despite this, the room still felt surprisingly premium (especially compared to Hyatt Place rooms in the USA) and was perfect for our 3-day stay, though we did miss having a kettle for hot water in the room (which all our other Japan hotels had).
Our room here also had nice pajamas/robes available
Overall, the room was exactly what we were looking for and acted as a great base camp for our expeditions around Kyoto and the surrounding area. If you’re planning to use the room as we did—as a resting spot after big expeditions across the city—it will likely be perfect for your needs. However, if you are planning to spend a lot of time in the hotel, it may be a bit cramped compared to some of the other Hyatt options.
Score: 4.2/5.0
Amenities
In terms of service, the staff at Hyatt Place Kyoto were helpful and almost universally spoke great English—while we read many reviews about the staff not speaking English, these are clearly outdated; this became immediately clear as more than 75% of the guests at Hyatt Place Kyoto were American, and we heard minimal Japanese while in the hotel.
The hotel gym was unexpectedly well-stocked, with a cable machine, weights, and cardio machines. While we were at the property, the gym was largely empty, making it easy to fit in any quick workouts before we adventured out in the city.
Hyatt Place Kyoto also has three laundry machines (washer/dryer combo), which were incredibly helpful for letting us travel more lightly and save space for souveniers; however, use of the laundry machines is extremely competitive, and you may have to wait several hours to get a load in (depending on the busyness of the hotel).
The breakfast at the hotel was good but is only free for World of Hyatt Globalists; for anyone else, we would recommend going to the cafe right next to the hotel to save money.
Overall, the hotel had all the basic amenities we needed, and allowed us to recharge and reset (i.e., do laundry) in the middle of our trip.
Score: 4.4/5.0
Summary
Hyatt Place Kyoto is not going to win any awards for top-tier luxury. However, if you’re hoping for a nice and reasonably priced hotel with all the basic amenities to act as home base and allow you to recharge while exploring the wonderful city of Kyoto, there is not a better Hyatt option out there. Not only does Hyatt Place Kyoto provide excellent value for the price, but it also feels surprisingly well-maintained and is extremely convenient for seeing the sights. Therefore, we recommend this hotel as a top option for anyone hoping to see Kyoto on a budget.
Overall Score: 4.6/5.0
We hope this article was helpful! If you’re interested in other Hyatt reviews, make sure to check out our thoughts on Hyatt Centric Ginza Tokyo, Carmel Valley Ranch, and Great Scotland Yard. To help you book your next holiday, we also have tips on how to combine your Chase/Amex, Amex/Capital One, and Chase/Capital One points, and guides for our favorite Hyatt hotels in Boston, London, Tokyo, Paris, Austin, and Chicago.