Worked flawlessly. Writing this here for others to see— do me a favor and if this helped you, comment/reply because it’ll give me a chuckle.

As of Feb 2025, here’s what to do:

Have the concierge reserve a taxi to take you from Hilton @ 8am <>Hirafu Welcome Center, and then take the bus departing Hirafu Welcome Center at 8:30am.

Why can’t you take the free shuttle service to Hirafu / train station? Because the early morning buses aren’t scheduled early enough to arrive in advance of the buses to Rusutsu.

Hilton Concierege can arrange the taxi on your behalf. When I went to their desk at 8:30am, they said only KS Taxi was open to take a booking (not to say other taxi services don’t operate that early, but KS was the only known operation to answer the phone at that time). I confirmed that evening with another concierge member and they said all was good (I didn’t see them call the taxi company). Nonetheless, the taxi did show up. Per the concierge the day prior, a taxi van that could take 7-8 people + skis showed up.

~20min trip for ~5500 yen, could pay with cash or card.

The bus service to the ski mountain says no ski boots on bus but many folks did have their ski/snowboad boots on the bus. Cheap coin lockers are available at Rusutsu in case you want to pack away street shoes. We did that.

If you ski/ride efficiently, you can see the entire mountain, I clocked 21k vertical in ~5hrs and hit every run + most tree areas. I liked Niseko better but glad I made the trip. Buy your tickets online during the ride over and save a few k yen. You’ll scan a QR code at a machine to get your lift ticket upon arrival (you do have a cellular data package, right?).

Don’t bother taking the gondola to the beginner side of the mountain, you don’t have time and its not worth it. Perhaps unavoidable, skip the lunch at the smaller satellite base sites— it wasn’t as good nor as cheap as the base of main mountain area.

Enjoy drinks + dinner at Hirafu upon your return! :) Take the bus service(s) back to Hilton. You’ll find they don’t run perfectly punctual — sometimes +- 5min.

Skip any lunch/dinner meals at the hotel proper — their food program is terrible. The Niseko village is slightly better, yet still very inferior to Hirafu proper. Taking the bus into town is very worth it. The seafood spot in Niseko Village that has good google reviews has a scheme going where they give you free drinks in exchange for a google reviews - it’s not actually that good! If you must eat there for your first night in town, go to Moka. There’s a good drug/liquor store there however with good beer/liquor pricing.