Holiday Inn Hotels in Ōmachi

We stayed in the hotel for one week. We like the hotel a lot. - Staff are nice and helpful, especially a passionate guy at the front desk. They helped us book restaurants and deal with toll payment. - Breakfast is great. We haven’t felt bored after one week given many varieties. Especially they have “today’s special”, different omelette every day. We like the wasabi cheese omelette. On the other hand, dinner buffet was ordinary. Food became cold. With the same price, we had a nice 7-course French dinner in a nearby restaurant. - Room is nice and clean, although a bit small. Bed is comfortable with different pillows. We have some difficulty to allocate our big suitcase in the room without block the way. However, we noticed poor management for laundry room and emergency cases. - There are only two washing machines. Some people put clothes on washing machines or nearby for queuing. We waited in-person for 15min several times, but someone claimed they came earlier, or said they need to add additional time for dry. We had to wait until midnight to do laundry. - Nice onsen, but poor emergency handling. One day I heard voices from speaker for ＞15min during shower, and then realized it was from a cell phone when I was in indoor bath pool. A lady with black glasses was using the phone in the pool (not sure if taking photos or videos)! I felt very uncomfortable and went to the outdoor onsen. But she came to outdoor onsen shortly. I went back to indoor onsen, and saw the phone on a chair beside the indoor onsen. Another guest also expressed her concern to me. I called emergency phone in changing room, said three times “someone is using cell phone in bathing area, please send a female staff asap”. Unfortunately the guy who answered the call does not understand English. 5mins later he came to the door of changing room, asking who called SOS. I told him again, and he finally understood, but did nothing except asked my room number. After we checked out the next day, the guy saw me and told me in Japanese that “sorry,but we will improve in future” (showed English translation to me). I was very disappointed. 1) Why did the hotel ask a guy who doesn’t understand English to take care of female onsen? What if someone fainted? 2) No actions were taken after I reported issue. No one came to stop the issue, no one checked whether inappropriate photos/videos were taken. Whole staff are nice, the hotel is poorly managed in some places.