Accommodation
Sapporo HotelsSapporo offers a good range of accommodation including smart business hotels, standard hotels, and budget style lodgings.
The upmarket hotels near the station are very convenient if you’re only staying one night, but there’s not much action in this area. Many people prefer to stay in the Susukino area where there are lots of shops, restaurants and bars.
Our favourite hotel in Sapporo is the
Mercure Hotel which is perfectly located amongst the shopping, nightlife and restaurants in Sapporo and is surprisingly quite cheap. The hotel has been recently refurbished and the rooms are a reasonable size and well furnished (including free internet access in the rooms). The hotel also has a lovely French restaurant and bar if you don't want to go outside to face the cold. One of the main draw-cards of this hotel is that lots of the staff speak English and they have a very comprehensive and friendly concierge service. Considering the quality of the accommodation and service, the hotel tariffs are surprisingly inexpensive.
It is also handy to stay at the Mercure if you want to catch one of the
Hokkaido Resort Liner shuttle buses to or from the ski resorts, because the Mercure is located just around the corner from the Ramada Hotel (where negligible English is spoken), one of the Resort Liner pick-up and drop-off points.
We have also stayed at the
Sunroute New Sapporo hotel which is a very reasonably priced hotel. It’s also located in the Susukino area and is a 5 minute walk from Subway Susukino station (Nanboku line) or 5 minutes by taxi from Sapporo station. The rooms at the Sun Route are Western style and very small, as is common in Japan. Even though the rooms are tiny, they manage to squeeze in a brilliant massage chair which is perfect for massaging the weary muscles after sitting on a plane for over 12 hours. The staff do not speak English, but the hotel is ideally located in the entertainment district, so there’s plenty of opportunity to get out and experience some of Japan’s wacky cultural activities.