Palace Hotel breaks ground on a 69-room Hakone resort, aiming for 2029
Palace Hotel breaks ground on a 69-room mountain resort in Hakone on the site of its former Hakone Kanko Hotel, with opening planned for autumn 2029.
Palace Hotel Co. has broken ground on the rebuild of its shuttered Hakone property. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on October 13, and construction has begun, the Tokyo-based operator said in a press release the next day.
The new Palace Hotel Hakone is planned to open in autumn 2029 as a 69-room mountain resort in Sengokuhara, within the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park — six suites and five villas among them, ranging from 57 square metres to as much as 250 square metres (up to 271 square metres with an open-air bath terrace), according to the company. The building will rise four floors above ground and one below, with a floor area of 12,850 square metres on a 17,450-square-metre site, and will include all-day dining, a lounge bar, a specialty restaurant and a spa, pool and gym.
The project is being built through a joint structure with two Fukuoka-based partners: Kyuden Co., the Kyushu Electric Power group company, and Kraftia Co. (formerly Kyudenko, renamed in October 2025), under an entity called the Hakone Sengokuhara Special Purpose Company. Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei is the architect, Kajima Corporation the builder, and the UK interior design studio Tara Bernerd and Partners is designing the interiors, Palace Hotel said.
The site operated as the Hakone Kanko Hotel from 1960 until its closure in January 2018, which the company attributed to the building's age. Palace Hotel itself dates to 1960; it opened its flagship beside Tokyo's Imperial Palace the following year, rebuilt it between 2009 and 2012 and reopened it as Palace Hotel Tokyo, and added Zentis Osaka in 2020.
President Daisuke Yoshihara called the partnership with Kyuden and Kraftia an honour and described the project as a step toward the company's future, framed around the Palace Hotel brand concept the release renders as "the finest of Japan."
With opening still three years away, the project will take years to show whether Palace Hotel's Tokyo-flagship positioning carries over to a mountain resort.