Meritus Mandarin Haikou

Stayed there for one night and overall it was not too bad. Although I can see the hotel is quite old, the facility is actually relatively well maintained. Also their Gym was quite a surprise to me. Location is very good as well.

Firstly, this is a 5 star hotel by Chinese standards, not international. My wife & I stayed for 9 nights. The lobby and public spaces are pretty good, well maintained, clean & tidy. The restaurant has a good variety of food, and the quality is pretty good too. It cost us an extra 50 RMB per day to get breakfasts included for the 2 of us. This well worth it. They have a good gym, pool & sauna. Note that you will need a swimming cap if you want to swim in the indoor pool. The room itself is where the standards started to drop. It was a good size with plenty of space. But it was quite damp, and the smell when you enter the room just about knocks you over. It's a smell I've experienced in a lot of Chinese hotels. I think a mix of humid mustiness mixed with cigarette stench. The floor was supposed to be non-smoking, but I think it's fairly regularly flaunted by Chinese guests. There were cigarette burns on the carpet. The bed-sheets were just about always damp & clammy because of the humidity. I think a 5 star hotel (by whatever standard) should really have some form of functioning humidity control in a humid city such as Haikou. The toilet would occasionally not seal properly, meaning that water would continuously run into the bowl. When this happens, you can't flush it. Again, this is something I have experienced in other Chinese hotels, and is just a consequence of cheap parts & poor maintenance (in my opinion).

Stayed at this hotel for 2 nights during my golf trip to Haikou and found the stay pleasant. This hotel would easily make the international 4-star rating but not 5-star. The room is nice and comfortable but the carpet and couch have stains. The coffee pot is plugged inside the cabinet under the TV so if you want to boil water for coffee or team, the inside of the cabinet gets wet from the exhausting steam. But the best thing about this hotel is it's a business hotel not frequented by Chinese tour groups, hence no crowds especially during breakfast. Here, one can leisurely select the variety of breakfast items from coffee brewed from an espresso machine to true bread stations for bread toast, croissants, or pastries to salad bar. There's such a variety of food items, if you select a piece from each dish you would be filled. Overall, this is a nice comfortable hotel without the combative Chinese tourist crowd but does not reach international 5- 5-star standards...