Honestly, I had a pretty poor experience here. I have absolutely no idea how this hotel has four diamonds and a top recommendation.
Have you ever noticed how you can tell the quality of a hotel by quality of the carpets/flooring in the halls?
These carpets were in really, really rough shape. Dirty and lumpy (maybe “bumpy” or “off road terrain” would be a better description) and stained black and brown. Definitely foreshadowing.
I arrived and got my room key.
Turns out that I had missed that I had booked a smoking room. My bad. So, I contacted the staff and paid $5/night for an upgrade to a non-smoking room. Aaaand, it smelled like cigarettes. I shrugged my shoulders, dropped off my bags and headed back into Shanghai proper. (This neighborhood seems to primarily be the elderly and there doesn’t seem to be much happening, though I didn’t dig too deep.)
When I returned a few hours later and actually spent some time in the room I found that it smelled like smoke AND urine. I hated to be a Karen about this (no offense, Karen), but I just didn’t want to sleep on that bed.
I went back to the front desk and asked for another room. They were kind and courteous and gave me a new room.
Well, this room also smelled like smoke. I gave up, opened the window, cranked the air handler (I didn’t use A/C because I had the window open) and turned on the bathroom fan.
Again, I want to reiterate that the staff were amazing. One of them was even a cute robot. But, this place was two star at best and I just can’t recommend it until they do some serious cleaning and renovation.
That said, the room was cheap and I was only going to to be there for two nights.
I was told that I could rent it by the hour if I preferred. That made sense.