The Best Hotels in Beppu

Beppu's hot spring waters feed directly into the resort's onsen baths, which is either the best argument for booking a room with a private one or a very good reason to use the communal bath and let someone else clean it. This is a full-service luxury resort, serious about it in the way Japanese hospitality tends to be, with spacious rooms, terraces overlooking the landscape, a HARNN Heritage Spa, and a French restaurant anchoring the dining. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

A hillside ryokan-adjacent retreat above Beppu where the architecture reads modern gallery as much as inn, with a serious collection of contemporary art hanging throughout. The spring-fed baths and the kitchen's Italian-leaning menu sit alongside traditional Japanese hospitality without any obvious friction. From the rooms, you get Beppu Bay on one side and the city's famous geothermic hot springs, the so-called "eight hells," on the other.

Every room at Kannawaen comes with its own outdoor bathtub fed by the hotel's completely natural hot springs, which tells you exactly what kind of stay this is. The ryokan-style property sits in Beppu, the biggest hot spring resort in western Japan, so the city takes bathing seriously and so does the hotel. Rooms run from Western doubles to traditional futon layouts, all with cypress wood tubs inside. Two restaurants and spa treatments round things out for anyone who surfaces long enough.