Hotel La Suite Kobe Harborland

It’s only Japan’s fifth-biggest city, and it happens to be located (almost literally) in the shadow of Osaka, a pair of circumstances that conspires to keep Kobe off many foreign visitors’ travel radar. It’s got its share of corporate headquarters, though, so this is the rare case where business travelers are in on a little secret: Kobe is a vibrant city, and a beautiful one — best seen, perhaps, from the pedestrian-friendly, waterside Harborland development, a mixed-use commercial and entertainment district home to what might be the city’s top luxury hotel, the Hotel La Suite Kobe Harborland.

The hotel is all suites, as you might have surmised from the name, in categories ranging from the deliciously humble Moderate on up to Le Roi and La Reine. All are quite spacious and extremely comfortable, the bulk of them in a relatively conservative style, but the top luxury suites in a more pronounced contemporary scheme.

A French and a Japanese restaurant provide a pair of high-end dining venues, both of them with spectacular nighttime views. Business travelers, as expected, are well taken care of, and there’s plenty of meeting and events space. But the most forward-thinking element of La Suite is its women-only spa, a decided rarity in Japan — and men, should they feel left out, will find no shortage of options elsewhere in town.