Golden Lustre Hotel

arriving at the Shenzhen airport i bypassed the taxi wanting 300 that quickly became 200 for the train that cost 8 & the metro 9 stop is close to the hotel the staff in general has limited or no english [ but may speak other languages ???] & the usual of not reading my advanced booking printout until i pointed out the section printed in chinese . very helpful in connecting the internet ,but the service is still limited with the restrictions in china it may have been 5 star once & the rooms compact but comfortable .bathrooms to suit the age it was built .the surrounding area a varity of restaurants if you speak the language or starbucks, macdonalds to subway nearby. great area for nightlife if you want to party

I have stayed there for 1 Night with Group! The staff was really friendly ! They are learning English, However you need to keep translator with you as their English is poor. Check in was smooth. Hotel looked old and tired. There was no proper lighting at the entrance and reception area. It looks like that the hotel is not been maintained since years. The breakfast served was a set menu with only Chinese food. There is no continental or American breakfast , No fruits , No juices ....No Bread ... The hotel is only good for Chinese people. Will never recommend to International travelers

I stayed at the Golden Lustre in Aug-Sept 2011, and can report that it is a reasonable value, suitable for typical business travel. But it's not a slam-dunk. The location is excellent. The facility is 10 minutes from the largest Hong Kong border crossing and in a downtown, centrally located district. There is a ramp onto the motorway just 200 meters to the east, so congested city streets are not too much of a problem. Taxi rides to the convention center or the Border Crossing were both about 20RMB. Surrounding the hotel are many other hotels, banks, a Starbucks, neighborhood restaurants and other small businesses. It is not a glamorous situation -- the big multinational corporations and international banks are elsewhere -- but for typical business travel it's fine. We had some trouble checking in. I had a confirmation from my on-line booking service (Hotels.com, sorry Trip Advisor) for three rooms pre-paid for four days. But the hotel had only booked the last name on the list, for the four days. It took a GREAT deal of pushing to get them to give us the rooms we had paid for. The facility itself is showing it's age. It probably was a five-star hotel years ago, and the lobby is still very impressive. But the rooms are smallish, the bathrooms are basic, and the hallways clean but not interesting. There is no mini-bar and no free bottled water. There was a luggage rack but it was tiny. There is no 110-V electricity in the bath for your electric razor. The TV channels are pretty spartan. The bed was Ok and the air-con worked fine, but overall the room is pretty ordinary. Adequate, but ordinary. There are two lobby restaurants but they are plain, indeed. There is no bar unless you want to spend some time in an ear-knumbing karioki club. There also is a spa ("full-massage with oil, 260RMB!" an impossibly young chinese lady enthusiastically preached to my associate) and a giant but vacant swimming pool. Almost nobody in the hotel speaks english. If you need any special assistance you're going to be dissappointed. It took me 20 minutes to get the front desk people to write me a note that said "Convention Center" in chinese to give to a taxi driver. There is no breakfast buffet, just dim sum, and the menu is all in chinese. We had to have the waitress order our dim-sum for us, and she guessed at what we might want and was pleased when we liked her choices (but no chicken feet, please). For business travellers, life shouldn't be quite this hard. Around the neighborhood life gets interesting, and this must be one of the central night spots in Shenzhen. If you stand in front of the hotel, there must be a half-dozen "spas" and massage centers, and another 5-6 Karioki bars. Connected to the hotel (to the right as you walk out the door) is a very expensive night club -- far over my budget. And every evening a number of highly attractive women stand in front of the hotel, talking (pretending?) on their cell phones. After ten p.m. things get very busy, bright and noisy. It's actually kind of fun to just observe. It isn't offensive or shrill such as at Pataya Beach in Thailand, and everybody leaves everybody alone unless you want to strike up a conversation. Which, in all honesty, works fine for me. One vital safety tip: at the front of the hotel there are three steps down to the street. However, there is a slight uneveness in the pavement right before the steps; probably not more than 1 cm or half-an-inch high. But I nearly fell when my heel slipped on this tiny discontinuity, and I personally observed a very pretty Chinese woman race out of the hotel, hit this ledge with her heels and fall hard, right on her face. It's the kind of thing that in the USA would dissappear after the first law-suit. Not so in China, I guess. Overall, if you speak Chinese this is a great, convenient and affordable choice. Otherwise it's a little bit difficult.