First off, I want to say that the housekeeping depar**ent was wonderful. They were not only great cleaners but they were also very thoughtful about checking when we would be out of the room during the day if they happened to show up when we were there. A few other things that were great about the hotel: the spectacular location (it's near so many great restaurants in a very walkable area), the big empty swimming pool with a view of the city, the generosity with face masks, and all staff seemed well trained in hospitality...
So it breaks my heart that our arrival at the hotel so completely marred our stay.
When my kids and I walked into the hotel one of the staff--I'm afraid I didn't catch her name in my shock, but I believe she was the manager on duty--grabbed a handful of gloves and handed them to us as we were still struggling to pull out all the green codes required of us (we were told to show two codes initially and then later would go through many more codes in a quest to see which would be accepted). She started the conversation by asking if we were leaving and when we said we were checking in, she asked to see the tracing app and immediately declared all the places we had been to as dangerous (the app was green and there were no asterisks at that point, I would later gain an asterisk thanks to being in Wuhan). They were not. We had travelled carefully, tracking the news of outbreaks and did our best to avoid all dangerous locations and crowds. We explained this to her and walked her through every place on our trip that we had been, but she refused to accept any of this. She kept insisting everywhere we had been was dangerous. It didn't matter to her how many green codes we had. We were foreigners that had come to Wuhan from a city in Jiangsu, taking a route that travelled near provinces where there were COVID-19 cases, and that meant we were dangerous.
I want to be sympathetic. People in Wuhan had a much worse 2020 than anyone else in China. I can only imagine how terrifying it must be to have another significant outbreak a year later (we further had the bad luck of arriving in Wuhan on the same day as new cases). The hotel staff gave us a free fruit plate and they gave my daughter a stuffed animal, which she adored.
But I was also travelling alone with two kids who were so traumatized by the experience (they were worried that we would be taken to a hospital or quarantine center and separated for who-knows-how-long) that they initially refused to eat dinner and still talk about the experience a week later (it didn't help that they noticed a Chinese guest arrive and check in without a face mask while we were still being interrogated with gloves and masks on and waited for a doctor to come and clear us).
When the kids finally did decide they would eat, so long as we didn't leave the hotel, we discovered there was no longer ocean fish or seafood on the menu because of the virus which was interesting because we would find plenty of places outside the hotel that still offered salmon. Later when we tried to go to the Thai restaurant in the ball, we were told it was not open to us because of COVID-19 restrictions even though two lovely ladies who looked shocked to see us in the elevator were welcomed in. I assume there was some small private engagement or meeting that wasn't open to the public as there was no information anywhere that said the hotel restaurant was closed to the public.
So I am divided on my feelings on this hotel. I want to believe it is a well run hotel and we were just unlucky to arrive on the wrong day. I can't really see myself staying here again if I return to Wuhan. My kids and I didn't really feel welcome here.
Outstanding
4643 Reviews