Crowne Plaza Hotel Lanzhou

The hotel is a bit old. The view of the river is amazing tho.

My husband and I stayed for 1 night at the Crowne Plaza Lanzhou. We really enjoyed our stay. It's a beautiful hotel with some areas for improvement. Pro: - Great location with lots of restaurants within walking distance - Beautiful modern rooms; spacious and comfortable beds - the room with a view of the Yellow River was beautiful, especially at night Cons: - no English speaking staff; that's ok since we were able to communicate with translation app - there's a number of restaurants in the hotel; however, they were very empty. We arrived to the Chinese restaurant (I think on the 2nd floor), and there was only 1 table of customers who were smoking, had alcohol bottles all over the table, talking very loudly so we decided to leave - very odd -- they were doing maintenance right over the food service area during the breakfast hours; nothing was covered so we didn't get any items from that section of the buffet

The Crowne Plaza Lanzhou is doubtless one of the best places to stay in town; its location is not exactly central but taxis are not expensive. The rooms are spacious, comfortable and well-maintained, though the air-conditioning, regulated to 21 degrees, never lowered the temperature beneath 28 degrees during the four-night stay, and the windows could not be opened. Smiling is not a strong point among the staff on the ground floor, which suggests to me that smiling is not part of local custom (there appear to be almost no foreign guests), or the hotel management does not encourage it. Any foreigner who tries to speak Chinese gets very odd looks, though the staff’s knowledge of English is not that great either. We are definitely not in Shanghai here. That being said, the concierge desk can arrange for a reasonably-priced car to go to the Yellow River Stone Forest (a kind of walk-through Grand Canyon that Genghis Khan is supposed to have crossed with his troops) that is well worth the visit - once the staff have grasped what and where it is. The “Persia” restaurant on the fourth floor is a little strange, as it does not even try to serve Persian food, but halal dishes from the Chinese north-west. If you ask for a table in Chinese at the door, the staff member turns to her colleague and, with a giggle, says that she doesn’t understand… The service is inept and they try to fob you off with ordering on-screen (highly unhygienic, and it is surprising that the experience of the pandemic has not made people realize that these screens are vectors of disease – quite apart from the fact that they are illegible. No hand sanitizer offered.). One would be tempted to have a glass of red wine with the meat (the food is OK), but one runs into the out-dated Chinese habit of selling wine only by the bottle… It should also be explained to the staff that, when they have arguments in the kitchen, they can be heard in the adjacent dining room. Not a great success of a meal. The buffet on the ground floor is probably a better bet, though the offer is limited. Breakfast is very strange, as hot water for tea becomes intermittently unavailable (in China!) and several other items (bananas) disappear and have to be requested. The lobby bar does not keep cold beer (despite the 30 degree heat outside); I tried pre-ordering one a day ahead, but even that failed. The refrigerator behind the bar is used for storing, not cooling, beverages…?!!! The solution systematically offered was to put ice in the glass before pouring. If I were the management, I would send everyone for a shake-up on a staff enthusiasm and logical thinking course. It is astonishing, as Crowne Plaza runs some perfectly worthy establishments in China, but clearly the local mindset generates a certain measure of resistance.