Ritan Hotel Downtown Beijing

Stayed at the Ritan as part of a tour package. It is an upper class hotel from a Beijing point of view. The rooms are clean with all amenities. The restaurant leaves a bit to be desired at it caters to a large number of Eastern European consulates in the area. The breakfast buffets are outstanding. I never had duck breast slightly rare or lamb chops as breakfast meat. This is in addition to quite a selection of Muslim foods as well as Chinese and American of course. In terms of location there is Ritan Park across the street which is free to the public. Go in the morning and you get to see or participate with people exercising or dancing to music. There’s also a very large shopping mall about 10 minute walk with an excellent food court in the basement.

There were pros and cons that my son experienced staying here. Bottom line though - he would not return. Pros: clean rooms, plenty of space and convenient location. Cons: breakfast did not offer variety anticipated, and only one person in entire hotel who spoke a small amount of English (despite all the promotion that there were plenty of English speaking employees). My son was traveling alone, does speak mandarin and was working at a nearby business - so we chose this hotel based on other positive reviews. When he returns - he would prefer either a more American hotel or smaller boutique hotel.

Okay, this property has a number of pros and cons. Pros: 1. Good location. Right around the corner from U-Town shopping mall with 30+ restaurants and fast food offerings. 2. Clean and nice large rooms with nice finishes and seemed to be decently maintained. Cons: 1. Air conditioning did not work and the controls were difficult to read with the broken screen. Others on our tour said their AC didn't work for them either. 2. Front desk staff only had one person who spoke very limited English. No help with the AC problem. 3. There were 4 elevators. Only 3 worked and one day only two worked so getting one was quite a wait. They did get the 3rd one working the next day. Two of the three were enclosed in sheets of plywood, like freight elevators. I'm sure this was to protect the walls from the construction going on on the 3rd and 4th floors. 4. The refrigerator was worthless for cooling. The light was one when the door was opened so we know it had power. Just did not cool-at all. 5. Don't go off of the pictures for the property. According to people from Australia we spoke to, who had stayed at the property several times before, the property had recently been purchased by new ownership. They said the property was going through a major renovation on the 3rd and 4th floors where the normal dining room was located. So no restaurant currently on the property. The breakfast was served in a temporary dining room on the B1 level. It was crowded and pretty bare bones, which about 5 large tables downstairs and some tables in a loft up some stairs. 6. There is no English on the TV. This was not a deal breaker because we were always busy during our stay. But once we got to Shanghai it was nice to be able to catch up on what was going on in the U.S. with CNN and ESPN. I think you can do better. At the least I would wait until the renovations are completed and then see if they fix the problems above before booking.