Grand Millennium

The Millenium Grand is a wonderful centrally located hotel with a beautiful grand lobby. It has an amazing resort style heated Olympic pool, hot tub and incredible gym. They serve a wonderful breakfast in a great room. An employee waits at the elevators so the elevator is always ready to take you to your room. The rooms with king bed are large and modern with wonderful large marble bathrooms. The hotel sits next to the China World Mall which is a huge luxury mall with many dining options and reasonable prices. Next to the hotel is the Mcdonald's and the Seven Eleven across the street. Make sure to download the alipay app for your purchases in China. Use the Diddi app for taxis which are cheap. $6 to 10$. I liked the 6 passenger vans which have leather reclining chairs. Let the concierge arrange your tours. You will need to have your passport with you at the time of admissions for the forbidden palace and great wall or all other activities. Everything needs to be reserved in advance online. The concierge can help you with your reservations. We rented a 6 passenger van for the day with driver for the great wall for $130.00. Make sure you have google translate. T-Mobile account for cell service was great with the $75.00 travel pass from T_mobile. We were there for 5 nights. I also had custom made shirts at the silk market beijing. They also make dresses. Bargain with them. AI has the rates online for what you should pay there.

Overall a good stay. Breakfast had cooked and other western/continental and Asian breakfast options. More focus on Asian breakfast but that’s to be expected. Many staff had limited English so a translation app helpful. Room Was clean comfortable and when new would have been impressive. Very good AC. Very spacious but showing its age in places-taps worn, chipped finishes. New carpets needed throughout much of the hotel. Stationary provided, plenty of bathroom amenities including scales and electric blinds and separate AC in bathroom. Front desk staff were a little frosty - not a put you at ease welcome made worse as our Alipay was playing up due to our bank refusing to accept we are actually in China. Cakes and ice cream stand in reception and tea offering excellent. They take a deposit of around 1000RMB but this is normal in hotels around China. To swim you must have a Swimming cap. They have them for sale but I knew this was often the case in China so came prepared. Really lovely pool and the best gym we’ve had in a hotel yet. My gym mad sons were impressed with it ‘for a hotel gym’. This hotel is in the business district so very quiet on weekends but there is a high-end mall walking distance away with a Michelin restaurant inside and there is a 7 -11 store around the corner for snacks / drinks to take on days out. We felt safe wandering around in this area as tourists.

We spent 2 nights in this hotel. The welcome was pleasant and everything was easy (knowing that we had a guide who spoke Chinese for us at the front desk). The first downside is the language, because almost no one at the hotel spoke English or at least not enough for us to understand each other. The second thing that personally bothers me but is in all hotels is the air conditioning. Everything is extremely air-conditioned, especially the rooms and the breakfast room. You therefore have to be careful about the temperature change and keep a jacket with you to cover up. The breakfast was very good! It was surely my favorite part, with a lot of variety. Things that we could just as easily find in China as at home, from savory to sweet, with a lot of choices. A third small remark, take it or leave it, is the bathrooms. So not all the bathrooms are the same in all the rooms because we had taken two rooms: one for my mother (this one was very good) and one with two single beds for my brother and me. And in ours, the bathroom was really very poorly lit and didn't offer much privacy if you see what I mean… so for a couple's room it might be nice, but I don't see the point of this bathroom knowing that we had a room for two people who clearly weren't going to sleep together and therefore didn't necessarily want to share that kind of bathroom. But in hindsight, the hotel had everything we needed and much more. It was a pleasant stay!