Somerset Grand Fortune Garden Beijing

Goods: - The room is big. - The location is decent. 5 minutes to the east, you are on Lucky Street with restaurants. The subway station is under 10 minutes walk to the west on the same road. Bads: - The room is way too old. The way it furnished, I thought I was back in the 80's or something. How the furniture was arranged was quite not matching today's lifestyle. There were WAY TOO FEW PLUGS in the room. I had to unplug other appliances in order to charge my cell phone, then unplug my cell charger for my laptop; if you have a family of 4 and each has a cell (which is mostly the case today), good luck on fighting for plugs. - The cleaning service wasn't great. I had no idea why the hotel sealed the top of the shower drain so there was no way to clean up the hair until the hair blocked the drain entirely (and you can probably guess what happened next). The furniture seems way too old to judge if it was aged or dirty. Don't even try to open the curtain in the kitchen. The view was horrible with all the garbage outside. - Some of the staffs were not as nice as the Somerset at ZhongGuanCun. Poker faces all the way.

We stayed there in October 2008. Our 2 bedroom deluxe apartment was wonderful, very clean and huge. We felt very safe because it was on a high floor and you needed a hotel card key to use the elevator. Whenever we needed a taxi to go somewhere, the lobby staff kindly wrote down the name of the place in Chinese characters for the taxi driver and we carried around a card or note paper with the Somerset Grand Fortune Garden's name and address in English and Chinese. Our taxi drivers had no problems taking us wherever we needed to go. We found the staff to be extremely helpful and polite, Having a washer/dryer was great as we had been traveling in China for 10 days and were running out of things to wear. Take care in reading the instructions for the washer/dryer. If you don't set it right it will keep washing your clothes for 2 hours and then steam them in the dryer part for another hour. We ended up hanging most of our clothes up in the huge walk-in closet. They have a nice little ringed binder with the instructions for all the appliances, which was extremely helpful. The breakfast was a little limited and needed some improvement so I would get food in the little shop attached to the apartment hotel. We ate out for most meals so we did not get a chance to use the very nice looking kitchen or big dining room. All in all it was a great and very comfortable experience for us. The maid who cleaned the apartment was very good at her job and very sweet. It is far away from the Forbidden city and some of the bigger tourist spots but we found that was a good thing as we avoided the noise and crowds of the inner city. I definitely recommend the private taxi to the Somerset Grand Fortune Garden from the airport. It was worth the price.

This is one of the worst places I've stayed considering the price I payed per month. The Rooms are very old and not well maintained, the windows are badly maintained thus wind and bad smell blows through the apartment. The swimming pool is very tiny and dirty, we got skin problems after taking bath, maybe the PH is not well. The worst came at the end when we moved out. The hotel was not able to return the deposite within 5 weeks to my bank account. I'm still fighting with the Somerset to get the money returned. at the bottom line, I would not suggest this Somerset Grand Fortune Garden. There are better places around, like the Kempinsky or Oakwood Residence.