Travellers' Checks | A spa-musement park? Is Japanese hot-spring resort Beppu serious?

Promotional video for project combining spa with amusement park is a YouTube hit, but it’s not clear whether this is possible. If it is, you can bet Japan will do it first

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An image from a promotional video for the Beppu City Spamusement Park project.

Adam Nebbs

Published: 5:15am, 8 Dec 2016Updated: 4:54pm, 7 Feb 2017

A still from Oita prefecture’s hot-spring baths promotional video.

It’s not really clear if the mayor of the hot-spring resort city of Beppu, on the Japanese island of Kyushu, was serious when he promised to build a “spa-musement park”, but its promotional video (below) received more than two million views in 10 days on YouTube. It’s not even clear whether such a spa/amusement park hybrid would be possible, or if the English-subtitled video (which was filmed in a real amusement park, with no CGI) is in fact serious, or just tongue in cheek.

Japanese regional tourism boards occasionally put out strange and perplexing promotional videos, which they hope will go viral, and this one is right up there with Oita prefecture’s oddly appealing synchronised swimming in hot-spring baths video from last year. If cable cars, roller coasters and carousel cars can indeed be filled with steaming hot-spring water, then it will likely happen first in onsen-crazy Japan – and probably in Beppu.

For a more realistic look at the bubbling and steamy delights of Beppu, and many other tourist spots around Japan, visit Japan Airlines’ brand-new Explore Japan website at jal.japantravel.com.

ENGLISH SPIRIT London will see the opening next week of what will, presumably, be its first and only gin-themed boutique hotel. Due to limited space, rather than an anticipated lack of interest, The Distillery will offer only three guest rooms. These will be located on the fourth floor, overlooking Portobello Road in Notting Hill. The rest of the building contains facilities such as The Ginstitute (where visitors can learn all about the spirit formerly known as mother’s ruin), a pub, bar and GinTonica restaurant. Room rates will start from £125 (HK$1,234) per night. See www.the-distillery.london for more “ginformation”. Also joining Britain’s so-called “Gin-aissance” is British Airways, which has stamped its company logo on a new blend created by Cambridge Distillery, also supplier of an exclusive gin to the House of Lords.