Grand Hotel Du Palais Rouge

Basically we booked the hotel through a famous booking web site. we arrived in the hotel at 8pm (which is exactly the arrival time specified in the booking) to find out that the hotel was fully booked!!! We thought was a misunderstanding between the hotel and the booking provider but the naive lady at the reception was so nice to admit that the previous occupier of our room was supposed to leave in the morning and simply failed to check out and at the moment he was not in the room. After 2 hours on the phone with an arrogant and unqualified 'manager' we agreed on spending the night in another hotel that they found for us (they would have paid the difference in price) and checking in the morning after. We spent the night in the dirtiest and smelling hotel room I've ever been (the Palais Rouge manager said that it was an equivalent hotel ;-( ) and the morning after we arrived again to the Palais Rouge for the check in. The answer was that they thought we were happy with the hotel they sent us the night before and so they renewed the staying of the previous guy!!! VERY PROFESSIONAL!! I cannot say much about the hotel because we didn't really stayed there... but the incompetence of the management is simply ridicolous and in any case it looks much better from the pictures then in reality. My advice is to invest a bit more money to get much much more in return. That's what we did in the end.

newly build hotel in old style. Rooms without windows are smelly, rooms with windows have partially broken window handles, so you hope nobody jumped when you return. Biggest problem is that they just change rooms and even cancel rooms as they like, especially if you book them thru a discount page. So check what you booked and better call before arrival to ensure you have a room to sleep. If you have a room, the decoration is nice and beds are soft. Breakfast is cold toast with cold eggs, ham and jam together with banana and orange as well a coffee/tea. Locations is very close to the subway exit and the Lama temple. But i think there are better places to stay.

We found the hutong feel of the hotel to be really cool. The hotel is very close to the lama temple and the subway few minutes away which makes it very convenient to get around Beijing. We stayed 5 nights and got to the hotel around 4 am the first day after a very long flight and the receptionist forced us to pay for an extra night, almost 3 times what we had paid for a night off agoda, bargained him down to 300 yuan but still left a bad taste. Some staff speak english very well which helps and I found one particular girl to be impressive, she called the mobile company for me to get an english speaker as well as offered us an umbrella when it was raining. The wi-fi in the hotel is incredibly slow and unreliable. We found the rooms to be clean but dont expect any views. The food options nearby aren't too great, the bars in the nearby hutongs are pretty overpriced for what they are.