For those looking for a very cheap hotel near the Bund and aren't too picky about the hotel, this may work for you. This may sound like an attack on such customers - it isn't, but you need to know what you are getting into with the HengSheng as they are not what they market themselves as (4 star). I'll also admit upfront that I should have known better; you get what you pay for. However, I have relatives who had stayed here previously and recommended it and so I didn't investigate too much.
Location
The hotel location is the best thing it has going for it. The hotel is very close to the Bund and a short (10 minute) walk across a bridge will deposit you on the Northern end of this famous strip and all it offers. A further 10 minute walk will bring you into one of the greatest shopping strips around - the pedestrian only East Nanjing Road. However, the news isn't all good on the location front. Although close to everything, the hotel is just out of the main tourist roads and backs onto a small suburb of local shops, markets and drinking dives. During the day the result is nothing much more than pungent streets, but at night the result is a concerning number of poor locals hanging out around the hotel and entrance in varying degrees of intoxication from irritatingly noisy, to “trashed” and unable to stand. During the 2 nights we stayed before changing hotels none of them directly bothered us, but we carefully stuck together and went around them wherever possible. Those travelling alone may find these groups of men more concerning / troublesome than we did and should be alert.
Rooms
This, I'm afraid is where things go downhill. When we arrived we were told we could only have a smoking room, even though we had definitely booked a non-smoking room. We explained that not only does smoke bother my wife a lot, but I am an asthmatic and we really couldn't stay in a smoking room. After this discussion a non-smoking room was miraculously found (or so we thought). The room had a badly stained carpet that matched the badly stained sheets and the torn pillows. To complement this, the toilet didn't flush properly, the sink mechanism was broken and the shower didn't drain. The room had slippers nicely sealed in plastic, but when we opened them up it became apparent that they had in fact been previously used and re-packaged. Dejected after a very long day of travel, we collapsed into bed and tried to sleep as it was late and we had a tour in the morning. Unfortunately, sleep was not so easy to come by. It turns out the walls in the HengSheng are apparently paper cleverly disguised as plaster. We spent most of the night (until very late) tossing and turning whilst listening to the very loud TVs and conversations from rooms on either side of us.
All of the above issues could have been explained by them poorly deciding to give us a problematic room that was non-smoking. The next morning before our tour we spoke to the assistant manager and explained our issues and disappointment from the night before and requested a new room. He promptly arranged an alternate room for us and we gladly moved our things. The new room was a bare improvement over the previous; the toilet flushed and the sink and shower drained. However, the carpets turned out to be just as stained as did the sheets, the noise was almost as bad and the scales were rusted into position beyond any hope of use. Oh, and we were back in a smoking room. As far as I can tell our first room was unusually bad, but in general the rooms are fairly poor in nature.
Service
In spite of my complaints, the service was actually rather good. The staff were polite and tried to be helpful, especially the young concierge who arranged our tour for us and helped us get oriented.
Breakfast
Breakfast was included in the room rate which is [almost] always a nice thing. With trepidation we made our way down to the 'peony' room on the third floor for our first meal of the day and found the quality of the offerings on a par with the quality of the rooms. The selection wasn't too bad in terms of range. However, the meat dishes such as bacon and sausages had been left out after being cooked until they had gone cold and shrivelled. The pastry dishes and hash browns had similarly been allowed to fester until going soggy and the juices turned out to be some kind of cordial. They did have a 'chef' there cooking fresh fried eggs and omelettes for guests as required, but after watching him take 10 minutes to completely mangle someone else's omelette I decided not to bother. Furthermore, the table cloths and chairs in this room were very badly stained and torn just like the sheets in the rooms (see photos for evidence) and I was doubtful as to the year when they had last been cleaned properly.
After two nights out of our four night booking we left and checked into another hotel. As we had already commenced our stay there was no hope of getting a refund at that point, but we just didn't care; we were glad to be out and very happy with out new accommodation (Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel) - keep an eye out for forthcoming review on this place.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
