Guilin Plaza

This large hotel is well located. It is practical, was modern, and deserves a little refresh. The rooms are rather large. The breakfast is very simplistic, and the staff should be more welcoming. Correct price level.

The name of this hotel is a bit confusing. It is called the Guilin Plaza Hotel. In Chinese, it is called the Guilin Guan Guang Hotel (桂林观光酒店). Apparently, according to this trip advisor page, it is also called the James Joyce Coffetel? Much like reading James Joyce our stay here was unpleasant and confusing. My friends and I stayed here for 3 nights. The rooms were dingy and dirty. The shower drain was clogged with hair so our shower water wouldn't drain and would flood the entire bathroom. The air conditioning was weak and couldn't cool down the room (Guilin can get extremely hot and humid, so AC is pretty important). The hotel claims to offer laundry machines but the machines cost money and the dryer did not work. I spent 50 yuan trying to dry a load of laundry but ended up having to carry my wet clothes to the next hotel to launder. Additionally, in order to use the laundry machines, you have to download a special app to submit payment, which was complicated and time consuming. The young lady who works at the front desk was very sweet and lovely and tried her best to help us out with the various issues that came up. But these issues were outside the scope of what she was able to address. In conclusion, this is a gross, terribly maintained hotel. I highly recommend avoiding it. Also the coffee shop in the lobby is only open in the evening.

The Hotelroom was nice. It was clean and seemed to be new (albeit on closer inspection you were able to find some rusty places under the sink). everything worked fine and the shower was also agreeable. The reception really tried to make harder requests work. E.g. they did say they could wash my clothes in only one day. (despite me checking in at 15:00 and checking out at 08:00 the following morning) I just had to get the clothes in the afternoon, which was not possible for me. The adjacent Spa was great, they had a large selection and everything was clean and worked fine. (albeit their shoesizes stop at 44)