Beware this Hotel is a long way from Hangzhou attractions like Westlakes and location is not clear in sites like expedia. Promoted by the hotel as 30 mins away but took us longer on every occasion over 3 days.
We booked a non smoking high floor suite for 3 adults, our son is 15. We got the 13th flloor (smoke permeated the floor) and we later read the 41 first floor was smoke free in the hotel info sheet. We were asked for an additional 400 yuan for a roll away which we refused to pay for as we chose a suite and our booking was clearly for 3 adults. In the end we negotiated the cigarette smoke and low floor for the price of the roll away. the receptionist i negotiated with was rational and sophisticated problem solver but had to defer to unseen management.
Overall impressions are : New hotel of extensive marble. Suites were nice, large with quality fittings, firmish bed but not bad for china! Staff - at times it was quite surprising to find in such new hotel, staff that were clearly well trained and experienced, an adequate mix appeared to exist with those that appeared to have had little or no training / experience. somehow the qualified staff never seemed too far away. Food - we had dinner once in the buffet dinning area next to the japenese rest. All you can eat buffet was not inspiring at all. after avoiding the buffet a number of dishes we ordered turned out not to be available and the food we did order was fair to poor. hainan chicken rice was disappointing, using chicken breast pieces that seemed to be flavoured for another dish entirely. the hamburgers had a greasiness and rather unpleasant 'animal meat fat' nuance I really wondered how this was achieved with what appeared to be a well ground and nicely cooked patty. The burger buns were petite dinner rolls dressed in sad lettuce and came with ok french fries. the food seem to come from a kitchen that did not care and or did not know. the waitress was very pleasant and attentative though.when we finished our meal we were later 'chased' by cash register staff to verify our room number and guest status. (one of the poor trained staff?)
We stayed during the may holiday week and the hotel seemed to be quite busy despite being nowhere near a tourist attraction and i wondered if this was a result of a promotional pricing campaign. i observed some of the guests had taken to spitting on the marble floors in public areas in the hotel.
overall if i needed to be in this part of hangzhou for some reason i would stay here again on the basis that with low expectations, things could only improve from such a low baseline, with good key staff (except kitchen) and nice physical facilities.
management might want to be a bit more accessable to clients if they want to improve guest experiences here.
- New Century Grand Hangzhou
