This hotel is a get away from everything. Perfectly located if you are there for the local activities such as skiing or golfing.

The built in onsen was an experience, however could use an upgrade soon. Clean and tidy as the rest of the hotel.

The staff was very helpful and enjoyed the variation on the breakfast-/dinner buffet.

We came without equipment, rented all gear and went skiing for 3 days and had great fun off pist in the forest.

Good memories.
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We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at the Rockwood Hotel at Aomori Spring and could very readily recommend it to others. It was the beautiful retreat from the stormy weather outside, and finishing the ski day with a soak in the onsen was perfect, especially the outdoor bath where it was great to watch it snowing very heavily from the comfort of the hot water.

In a previous iteration, the Rockwood Hotel was a Prince Hotel, so it had some similarities to Prince hotels at other Japanese ski resorts, except that perhaps it's had an update a little more recently than others. It was a very western style hotel, with just hints of the Japanese culture evident with some of the food, the mighty firm beds, the onsen, the karaoke room, and the very slow service in the bar provided by the Japanese staff (in classic Japanese process culture, it took the Japanese staff 20 steps to make you a drink and charge you for it, whereas the international staff could do it in a quarter of the time!). The hotel also had the ideal mix of international staff (some doubled as ski/snowboard instructors) and staff that only spoke Japanese, such that we felt like we were in Japan yet had the support of English speaking staff where required.

It goes without saying that the location of the hotel was ideal. Sure there's not much else nearby so you can only hang out in the hotel, but it was so convenient because the ski/snowboard locker room was perfectly ski-in ski-out. It was so easy to pop into the hotel to grab an extra layer or for a quick warm-up (it was very cold when we were there).

Our room was very good, and on the odd occasion when the storms eased, we had views across to the sea. Considering the size of the window, we imagine that the vistas would be spectacular when the weather was fine. The room was well sized for the two of us, but probably would have been a bit squeezy for 3 guests. And somewhat rare for Japan, the bathroom was reasonably spacious.

Like other Japan ski hotels with buffets, you could potentially tire of having buffet meals if you had a lengthy stay at the hotel, but thankfully the food selection was excellent and they varied many of the offerings each day. Some of the "hot" items were only lukewarm because they just used a warming light, but this is somewhat common at Japanese hotels. For breakfast, pancakes, eggs and granola were a very welcome sight!

We had dinner one night at the Rockwood Bistro, which consisted of lots of small, delicately prepared Japanese/French fusion courses. The food was absolutely spectacular! And it was lovely to accompany the meal with nice wine (we'd been mostly drinking beer and sake previously on the trip, and good wine can be hard to come by in Japan).

The lounge bar was lovely, and it had a lively ambience because there were some snowboard camp guests staying at the hotel, but I could imagine it could be very quiet at times. Drink prices were a little more than we'd been used to at some other Honshu ski resorts, but they weren't too bad.

In summary:

Pros: fabulous onsen (very clean), excellent service and support from English speaking concierge and other staff, ski-in ski-out, lots of facilities, very good wifi
Potential con for some people: only 2 restaurants to choose from
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