The bus ride is free from Sapporo to their hotel. It is an hour bus ride but first you have to find the location of where you have to take the bus and that was very difficult to find. A piece of paper on a wall near an ATM machine in the underground walkway by a bank building near Odori Park. WOW. We managed with the help of our receptionist at Mercure hotel. What a patience and efficiency was she. Then at the bank building, they understood and walked down with us even though it wasn't their job to do so. The name of the bus is Donan Bus and they even have wifi on board. Once you reach the hotel, you are surrounded by mountains! The lobby is massive and the hotel is equally massive. It was crowded with tourists and kids running around everywhere. Some people only come for the day. The hotel has 2 large swimming pool and huge onsen, which people frequent daytime. There was lots of tourists that did stay one or two nights like us. Their have a massive dining hall where they only serve buffet food. People come down dressed in Yukata for dinner or even breakfast. There is no quality in the food but it is plentiful. They have also another upscale restaurant which was much more expensive and more exclusive. Maybe they served better food there. We used their onsen (they have a few) and you need to go outside of peak time to fully enjoy it. We walked the town a lot and visited a few places. The staff at the hotel spoke little English. There was free wifi everywhere and the room was overlooking the river which was fabulous. The room was large with a king size bed and a twin bed. The bedsheets were not large enough to cover the whole bed...strange and also the blankets. It was very kitsch looking in gold colour but a small bathroom. It looked in need of refurbishing. I think it's a very old hotel. I loved Jozankei and would like to go back if in Hokkaido and sty at a different place, maybe not so crowded!

We drove to the hotel directly from Chitose Airport. The car rental company did not provide snow chains for the tyres as they insisted that the car’s snow tyres are good for all road conditions. Google map brought us to a bridge near the back of the hotel and after we managed to cross the narrow bridge that was totally piled in snow, our car could not get pass an icy patch onto the uphill slope. We called the front desk and although the front desk personnel who answered the phone was trying to help, we could not properly tell her where exactly we were stuck. We were almost in a state of panic given we were a group of 4 females.
I decided to run towards the hotel building and found a gentleman at the loading/unloading area and I asked for help. He quickly rounded up 4 other gentlemen and they immediately ran to our car to provide assistance. They helped to push the car 1/3 way up the slope before the car was able to drive the rest of the way up.
Only after that did they ask where we were staying for the night. It amazed me that these gentlemen were so quick to offer help and assistance in the dark, cold and snowy night even though we may not have been guests at the hotel.
After we had parked and was checking in, one of the ladies at the front desk approached me and asked if I had called earlier asking for help. She was so relieved and glad that we made it to the hotel.
We were given a bigger room and it looked pretty special compared to the rest of the rooms on the same level (ours had a little roof). Buffet dinner was delicious, although not great in terms of variety, but the crabs were fresh and sweet and the beef was grilled to perfection.
The onsen was relaxing and we enjoyed our stay there. Will definitely stay there again but we would not necessarily trust google map’s choice of routes.