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The Best Hotel In China?
Beijing hotels, like so many aspects of the Chinese economy, are wildly variable in quality and value. I’m sure you can all think of some horror* stories! Well, it turns out the the capital is in fact home to what has been voted the best hotel in the country – and that includes Hong Kong and Macau. Under the auspices of Tripadvisor, the holiday/hotel review website, the annual Traveler’s Choice Awards saw 60,000 hotels throughout the Middle Kingdom voted on. Fairmont Beijing, in Jianguomenwai Dajie, came out top – well done for them!
You can find the top 25 list here. The only other ranked Beijing hotel, the Hilton Beijing Wangfujing, came in at #20, and Hong Kong has a massive nine entries, suggesting that hotel standards throughout Beijing have some way to go. Nonetheless, congratulations to the Fairmont Beijing for setting the standard. Now we know where to put up business visitors!
*My first visit to Beijing was just before the Olympics in 2008. I had been working for a year in Jiangsu and came to the capital for a two-week holiday with my (Chinese) girlfriend. I ‘d booked a hotel near Wangfujing for us both, but when we turned up, they:
- claimed we didn’t have a booking
- then said it was actually at another branch of the chain
- then, when I showed them the printout of the booking, said we weren’t allowed to stay in the same room “because of the Olympics”.
Have things improved much now? What do you think? (Or do you have any horror stories of your own?)
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2 Comments
Never encountered anything so dramatically incompetent but I do recall a time when virtually every hotel we stayed at in China had its own in-house “entertainment” and all male guests would be subject to phone calls in their rooms. This happened to my dad and me despite the fact we were traveling with my mom and sister at the time. Times have changed a lot since then.
I don’t know if they’ve changed that much. Not too long ago, attending an event in an upmarket hotel, a guy hanging about outside inquired as to my need for “pretty girls”. I guess I must have looked his target audience.