Hotel Westin a Rusutsu

I had reservations for 2 rooms for a group of five for 3D2N on the 3rd week of December 2022. While the property is well kept and ground were impeccable, the check-in process is the worst experience I ever had in all my stays with the Marriott group of hotels since the 90s. It took an hour & 15 min to check-in, all because of some cultural pride of not finding the right people to do the job right from onset: at the drop off at the bellhop to billing at the frontdesk. The bellhop was a tall young Japanese lady who could not speak English at all. I was attempting to walk to the frontdesk as there were 2 coaches off loading guests simultaneously & I did not want to be caught with this large group of ten or more tourists. She refused not once but thrice with her out stretched arms to stop us from proceeding to the frontdesk with our luggage. Apparently, on highsight, she thought we were part of the other group & wanted to contain and corral our luggages. I gave up 😖 & regretfully let her & her co-workers take our 7 pieces of luggage. At the check-in, a young male bellhop assigned us to a senior looking male frontdesk staff who could not speak or understand English very well. It took him a while to get the paperwork done & when presenting the bill to be paid up full, it did not match the reservation booking which was a significant amount. It dragged on for another 20 min going back & forth with him. Using google translator helped a bit but again he could not reconcile the booking … I had to demand for our check-in to be handled by someone who could speak English but he refused & continue trying to communicate to me in his poor English. I had to raise my voice for help; kept asking him to let another senior member to assist us. Which caught some attention eventually. Fortunately, a young French lady who speaks Japanese & English, ironically was assigned to Japanese guests 🙄 came to our rescue. By this time, 45 min has elapsed, my family by then discovered our luggage has gone missing ! The silly bellhop tall Japanese lady who cannot speak English had grouped our bags with the larger group. She wanted to do her job well BUT did not understand there we were not part of the other group 😡 So silly way to run a simple hotel operation. Any attempts to ask any on the non-speaking Japanese staff to get an English speaking failed. It had to do with some silly cultural pride of not being competent to do their job that created this stubbornness and refusal to get an English speaking staff. Why 2-star rating instead of 1-star only because the English speaking French lady staff helped me to bring the billing attention to the duty manager who apologized for the delay & he resolved the billing issue eventually. Take note, I just stayed at The Westin Las Vegas a month ago in November & it took less than 5 min to check-in. What a stark contrast between this Westin Rusutsu & Westin Las Vegas. Shame that this winter ski resort bearing the Westin brand had