Ji Hotel Guangzhou North Tianhe Road

We stayed at the hotel for 10 nights on a business trip. The rooms are quite small but clean. The beds are rock hard and if you have issues with your back you should not stay there. The staff where friendly but no one speaks English which is a big problem. And the last 5 days the internet was not working.

I stay in a King-sized bedroom at a rate of CNY356 (~US46) net. The hotel is located next to Time Square and metro. Sofitel just around the corner. Room space was sufficient for a single traveller for business. Shower soap used Lux. WiFi was strong at all places. BreakFast paid CNY40 extra, with various choices. Restaurant is at 11F, clean & neat. Recommended to stay for a night or two.

JI Hotel is just a cheap, unsuccessful Chinese imitation of an ibis Hotel. When in Guangzhou's Zhu Jiang New City, I'd usually stay at the Ramada. This time the Ramada was fully booked and a local colleague took the liberty of booking what is now known is JI Hotel since it is right across the street from the Ramada. This hotel sucks sewer water. While you can get walk-up rates of $25, right from the beginning you can notice what a crappy hotel this is. Unlike most hotels, you cannot drive up to the front entrance since it is blocked. In addition, there is no hotel parking. Your car needs to drop you and your luggage at the street curb, you negotiate the barriers blocking off what should be a drive-up entrance, up the steps and into the front entrance. Not especially convenient for guests. Check-in is smooth and the lobby area seems clean although crowded. Once you get into the elevators the stench begins. The smell of tobacco is prevalent in the elevators, hallways and, especially, the rooms. Supposedly this is a no-smoking hotel, but in China people routinely ignore that -- and such is obviously the case in this hotel. I ended up changing rooms three times until I found one that didn't stink. The rooms are modern and functional much like an ibis Hotel. There is in-room WiFi which worked adequately, though the signal waivers a lot. The room was clean and the bed large and comfortable. Problems started when it was time to sleep. At the foot of the bed there is a flatscreen TV mounted on the wall. This TV can never be completely turned off and can only stay placed in stand-by mode. It can also never be unplugged. So, the blue stand-by light stays on forever and at night shines brightly. Because the room is small, and due to the brightness of the light and that it's only two meters from your face, it's very annoying when trying to sleep. Nothing can be done about this. The bathroom sucks. There is hot water when you use the sink, but later when you shower you find the shower has no hot water. While you can wash your hands with hot water in the sink, in the shower it's only ice-cold water. Every day I complained about this to the reception staff and every day they'd say they would fix it. The morons would go up to the room, see hot water worked for the sink and stupidly assume it worked also in the shower. I'd avoid JI Hotel like the plague. Go across the street to the Ramada. If you need a cheap hotel, there are many more alternatives. The ONLY alternative worse than JI Hotel is sleeping under a bridge -- and even that might not be so bad.