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Tokyo hotels have gotten expensive.
When I visited Tokyo in 2022 and 2023, places like the AC Hotel Tokyo Ginza and Courtyard Tokyo Ginza were about $200 – 250 USD, despite the Yen being stronger back then. They’re located in Ginza, so that’s where I stayed. But in 2026, even with record lows in the Yen, those same hotels were around $400-$600 USD, basically two to three times the price of the Moxy Tokyo Kinshicho (my stay was around $140 to $150 a night).
That makes the AC or the Courtyard 2-3x the price of the Moxy–and they are not 3x better than the Moxy. (The MESM autograph collection, however, probably actually is 2x better than the Moxy–I reviewed the MESM briefly on YouTube here).
That makes the Moxy interesting.
It isn’t luxurious as the MESM or the AC Ginza, and Kinshicho probably isn’t the neighborhood you dreamed about staying in when you planned a trip to Tokyo. But the rooms are reasonably sized by Tokyo standards, there is a genuinely good breakfast, which only costs 700 Yen if you’re Platinum or above–be sure you choose this instead of points at check-in, a surprisingly full-featured gym, laundry facilities, and a huge lounge where you can actually work or hang out.
The Moxy is also anything but boring. In fact, it is intentionally trying to not be boring.
The Moxy Kinshicho vibe
The Moxy is a fun hotel where the bar is also the check-in desk.
The whole hotel has a sort of risqué theme, in a very mild sense, with big lips on the entrance, and a currency conversion machine that asks you to “use me”.
This is funny sort of, because of the area the hotel is in, which I’ve seen called a red light district, even though that’s only sort of true.
I think the branding is just playful, but I suppose the top 1% most prudish people will not like it.
The Moxy overall feels like a very millennial hotel.
It’s a place that would have felt insane in 2015, or whenever the idea came up. It reminds me of the iPhone 6 era, when social media was coming up. The idea of having a bar be the hotel check-in would’ve been ultra cool.
I’m not saying the Moxy is dated, because it’s not dated.
But it is a very specific vibe.
The Moxy is like, a cool place to hang out if you are in your early twenties, or if you’re a digital nomad.
The entry way lounge is genuinely pretty good.
Even if you don’t care about the vibe, the lounge is useful. If you need to edit photos, work on your laptop or kill two hours before going somewhere, I’d much rather do it at the Moxy than in most relatively affordable Tokyo hotel rooms.
The rooms
The Moxy rooms are not huge, but they are substantially bigger than the tiny rooms at the Four Points Flex.
A standard Moxy room is around 17 square meters, compared with around 10–11 square meters at the Four Points Flex Higashi Kanda.
That doesn’t sound enormous on paper, but the Moxy gives you roughly 60–70% more room.
In Tokyo, you notice it.
Neither hotel is luxurious, but the Moxy feels substantially less like you have rented a box purely for sleeping.
The rooms otherwise lean heavily into the Moxy concept, with foldable furniture and wall storage.
It’s clever, but the room almost assumes that if you really want to work or hang out, you’ll go downstairs.
The Moxy technically has a refrigerator, although it is a tiny unit mounted into the wall that can hold maybe four bottles of Coca-Cola.
It works, but you are not stocking it with groceries.
It’s never a good sign when the hotel gives out free earplugs at the reception, but for my room on the eighth floor, it was pretty quiet.
Is Kinshicho really a red-light district?
Although Kinshicho is supposedly a red-light district, I think this is one of the few cases where being a foreigner is a huge advantage.
Men in suits on the street, who are apparently touts for bars, never talked to me. Even though I was a single male walking back to the hotel, it was as if I didn’t exist.
I didn’t feel threatened at all.
I was just 100% ignored.
Kinshicho genuinely does have an adult-entertainment and nightlife district, particularly south of the station, but calling it a “red-light district” gives a Westerner a slightly misleading mental picture.
There are hostess clubs, girls bars and adult businesses, but much of what you actually see is an enormous collection of bars in anonymous-looking buildings.
There are no women walking around in bikinis, and no glass windows with neon lights a la Amsterdam. I did a night walk of the location on YouTube, if you want to see it for yourself.
Unless you know what the Japanese signs mean, you could walk straight through the area without realizing what some of the businesses actually were. From a few nights staying there, I think you could take a 10 year old around with you and they’d have no idea the area had a reputation.
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The location
Kinshicho is an interesting location. It’s a little out of the way, and probably not somewhere you’d want to stay organically, but it’s hardly bad.
You are one stop away from Tokyo Skytree, and have a direct connection to Tokyo Station.
This is important when comparing affordable Marriott hotels in Tokyo, because none of the cheaper options are necessarily in perfect locations.
The Four Points Flex properties are cheaper, but most are also a little removed from Tokyo’s most obvious tourist areas. The Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay is a much bigger and more full-featured hotel than the Moxy, but it is all the way out at Tokyo Disney Resort in Maihama. The Courtyard Ginza, Bvlgari, AC Hotel Ginza, Tokyo Edition, etc. are in better locations. They’re also 2/3/4/5x more expensive.
The Moxy sits somewhere in the middle.
You are still in Tokyo, you have good train connections, and getting back from Tokyo Station isn’t particularly difficult.
But you also aren’t paying Ginza prices.
The gym is surprisingly good
One thing I did not expect was the gym.
The gym is down in the basement, and for what is ultimately a relatively affordable Moxy hotel, it is surprisingly full featured, albeit small. They have nearly everything for basic gym training, but only one or two machines, so if it were busy, you’d be out of luck. Still, I’ve seen far worse gyms, or places called gyms, which only have a Yoga Mat and one old treadmill. This is actually enough for most people to get a workout in. .
If you are staying for several days—or, like me, are trying to keep running and training while traveling—this is a much more useful feature than it might sound.
For a hotel at this price level in Tokyo, I was impressed.
Laundry at the Moxy
There are paid laundry machines and dryers in the basement, which I appreciated, but did not need to use.
Breakfast at the Moxy
The breakfast at the Moxy is actually genuinely good, although it is not luxurious.
It’s better than it should be given the price of the hotel. If you’re Platinum Elite you can get the breakfast for only 700 yen. I’m not sure if Titaniums get it even cheaper. It’s 2500 yen otherwise, which I would only maybe pay. At that price, I’d probably go out into the city and try my luck. However, if you are hungry hungry, you can’t beat a buffet.
There is no barista service which is a shame, but the self serve machine is fine, and there are pots of coffee available. Soy milk is available if you ask for it, which is unusual but fine I guess.
I appreciated that they had vegan chicken as a protein option.
The Miso Soup was nice on a rainy day, and classic stuff like cereal and eggs and bacon was available. The lunch and dinner menu at the Moxy also looked genuinely nice, though I didn’t eat at the hotel aside from breakfast.
The Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay has a dramatically bigger and better breakfast, but that is also a huge full-service resort. For a Moxy, this is good.
Four Points Flex vs Moxy
The Four Points Flex is probably the most obvious competitor if you want a cheap Marriott in Tokyo.
The Four Points Flex chain is boring but functional and nice in its own way. The Flex gives you coffee, toiletries, cheap drinks and somewhere clean to sleep—and that’s about it.
The Moxy gives you a substantially bigger room and then also gives you much better common space, a proper breakfast, laundry facilities and a gym.
If they were exactly the same price, I would choose the Moxy almost every time.
But they often aren’t.
When I visited, I saw Flex rates around $70–130 while the Moxy was more like $140–220, sometimes considerably more.
If the Flex is substantially cheaper and you’re leaving at 8 AM and coming back at midnight, paying much more for a cool lobby you never use is pointless.
What about the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay?
During my trip, the other Marriott I regularly found for under $200 was the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay.
On paper, the Sheraton is by far the most hotel for your money.
It is a huge, full-service, family-friendly resort with substantially bigger rooms, multiple restaurants, pools, a much bigger breakfast, a Marriott lounge and easy access to Disneyland.
The catch is location.
It is at Tokyo Disney Resort rather than central Tokyo.
If you are going to Disneyland and are a Marriott member, I would 100% choose the Sheraton.
If you want something spacious where you can come back at night, enjoy the hotel and don’t mind spending extra time on trains, I might choose the Sheraton too.
But if you don’t want to trek all the way out to Maihama, the Moxy Kinshicho is the much easier compromise.
What about the AC Hotel and Courtyard Ginza?
I’ve also stayed at the AC Hotel Tokyo Ginza and Courtyard Tokyo Ginza.
Both have a huge advantage over the Moxy: location.
You are in Ginza.
The AC in particular is clean, modern and genuinely nice, and the rooms feel much more conventional than the deliberately quirky Moxy. They have a crazy rooftop garden area, with views of the Uniqlo store.
But when I visited most recently, the AC and Courtyard could cost roughly two to three times what I was paying or seeing at the Moxy.
They are better hotels. They are not two or three times better hotels.
Once the AC starts approaching $500 or $600 a night, I find it genuinely difficult to stomach paying that much for what is ultimately still a relatively normal Marriott hotel room.
At $150-200 ish, the Moxy makes a lot more sense.
What about the MESM Autograph Collection?
The MESM is in an entire other price bracket. It is probably 2x as good as the Moxy, but costs 3x as much. Check out our brief video review of the MESM here. The Mesm, however, is not in as good of a location as the AC Hotel or Courtyard Ginza. But yeah, MESM is a true luxury experience, while the Moxy is a fun, casual but not luxurious experience. The Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay is a family resort experience, while the Four Points Flex is just a clean bed in a small room–at a great price.
Is Moxy Tokyo Kinshicho worth it?
Overall, I think the Moxy Kinshicho is one of the best compromises among the more affordable Marriott hotels in Tokyo.
It is not the cheapest. That is definitely the Four Points Flex.
It is not the biggest, most full-featured hotel. That is easily the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay.
And it is definitely not the best located.
The AC Hotel and Courtyard in Ginza destroy it on location.
But the Moxy sits in a useful middle ground.
You get a room big enough that you don’t feel trapped in it, a good breakfast, a surprisingly good basement gym, laundry facilities, a huge lounge where you can actually work or hang out, and easy enough transportation into the rest of Tokyo.
It also costs substantially less than the Ginza Marriotts, without forcing you all the way out to Disney.
If you don’t care where you sleep and just want something clean, go with the Four Points Flex.
If you are going to Disneyland, have kids, or want a huge room and a resort, go with the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay.
If price is no object, go MESM or Ritz Carlton or Edition, for sure.
But, if like 99% of people. you are concerned about price and value, and you want something bigger and more enjoyable than the tiny Four Points Flex rooms, but don’t want to trek all the way out to Maihama or pay Ginza Marriott prices, the Moxy Kinshicho is a great choice.
More Tokyo Hotel Reviews
Planning a trip to Tokyo? Check out our other hotel reviews:
- Moxy Tokyo Kinshicho Review: One of Tokyo’s Best Affordable Marriotts
- Four Points Flex Tokyo Higashi Kanda Review: Cheap, Clean and Tiny
- Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Review: Great for Disney, Good for Tokyo
- MESM Tokyo, Autograph Collection Review
- Moxy Kinshicho vs. Four Points Flex: Tokyo Budget Marriott Comparison
- Watch our short look at the MESM Tokyo on YouTube
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