The 34th G8 summit was held in Windsor Hall in 2008, some 540 meters above Lake Toya. Some venues are chosen for their facilities; this one is chosen for what has already happened inside it. The Windsor Hotel Toya stands on Mt. Poromoi like a white liner moored on a mountaintop, the lake below on one side and Uchiura Bay on the other, and those days wrote it into the record of modern Japanese diplomacy. Venues that carry head-of-state security, formal standing and a view at once can be counted on one hand in Japan.
The position is a line of security in itself: one road up, controllable and closable. During the summit the hotel shut for ten days and was given over to the delegations. It has eight meeting rooms with Windsor Hall at their center, which takes about 800 in a theater layout — enough for a large plenary or an awards evening. The lake and the sea of clouds frame any dinner set in front of them. In 2024 the hotel joined IHG's Vignette Collection, keeping its own history and gaining the distribution and operating systems of an international brand.
What it offers is standing. When an event needs more than floor space, when it needs the weight of having received the leaders of the world and no budget buys that at short notice, the Windsor Toya has almost no competition in Japan. A top-tier annual meeting, an international forum or a VIP awards evening placed here carries three scarcities at once: the record, the proven security, and a lake seen from a mountaintop.