Guilin Zhongshui International Hotel

We were placed in this hotel by the travel agency that organized the transfers and stoke of our stays in China. The hotel is definitely not a 4 star hotel. Not even for Chinese standards. The rooms are ok and large, kind of Victorian decoration, so instead of looking elegant, seems dated. There was no closet, though, only a line where you could hang some of your stuff and some drawers scattered in the room. Laundry is expensive, which surprised us given the hotel. The staff hardly knows English as well, but we managed. The hotel has pros: 1. For the free breakfast, once you get in, they immediately order eggs, ham and bring you coffee and milk. There is bread and ham in the breakfast buffet that otherwise is Chinese. 2.The hotel is behind a really beautiful park. If you get in before 700, admission is free. You can climb several of the peaks they have inside the park and have a beautiful view of Guilin. 3. Even though the hotel us not in the heart of Guilin, there is a very frequent bus (11) that stops almost in front of it, and in 6 stops you are downtown. In that same stop, you can take the 3 bus to visit the Reed Flute Cave as well. Guilin is a really beautiful city, and I felt it was a shame not being able to walk out the hotel and be at the heart of it. The walkways, pagodas and downtown areas illuminate at night, so is almost more exciting to explore at night than during the day. Also, for a city that has so many foreigners it's strange that the hotel doesn't command the language better. If you don't care much about location and language barriers, this might be a good choice for you. Fur us, the location trumps pretty much everything else.

We stayed at the Guilin Zhongshui in March 2015. We had the honeymoon suite which was ok, decor and fittings rather old fashioned. Location was ok for going to Elephant trunk hill, temples and parks, but the hotel staff and facilities were not up to standard. The hotel information book lists an in house restaurant. We rang reception to find out where it was, no response, did not understand. We took the book down to reception, showed them the entry in Chinese and English, they still did not know where it was. For an international hotel, you would think there would be an easily accessible restaurant. It was a strange building, perhaps we just could not find it.

We stayed here as part of a short tour that we took whilst visiting China. We probably wouldn't have chosen it ourselves. The room was fine, not large but it had everything you would want. The main issues for us were the fact that the bathroom smelled of smoke and that there was a damp area on the bedroom carpet beside the bathroom. We did tell the reception the day after, but they didn't seem too interested. We told them not as a complaint but to let them know that they had some maintenance to do to the room. Ah well. At breakfast next morning a member of staff raced ahead of us into the dining room to order us a cooked breakfast of eggs and ham. It was sweet of them to do that (although we would have been happy with the Chinese breakfast buffet on offer). In terms of location, it's a bit too far from the centre to walk but there is a lovely restaurant behind the hotel with a huge menu.