URBN Boutique Shanghai

Beautiful small hotel. Excellent location near many western restaurants 3 blocks away. Metro 3 blocks away. Room was in very good condition. Huge luxurious bath sheet towels. Awsome lunch. We had the radiation salad w blue cheese dressing and potatoe leek soup. Next time, we will definitely eat here for dinner. Staff was friendly and helpful.

It breaks my heart to write this review but the pandemic period caused a lot of negative changes to many of my favorite places in the world, and sadly, this property has been significantly impacted. I used to stay in room 7 every other month for the 8 years before the pandemic. It was a hotel with beautiful design, spacious and the breakfast and long ago the happy hour service was fantastic. That is no longer true. Well, the same design and eco friendly aspects are the same, but the property is run down, there was paint peeling in my room which had mold and dust in abundance. The breakfast and all food service is owned by a separate organization and it is terrible. For a week I would come down as soon as breakfast was available and the staff never once asked me what I wanted let alone made eye contact. The offerings were very limited. My advice is not to pay for breakfast with your room. You can get a Western breakfast 300 feet away at Wagas, or go across the street and buy baozi and tea eggs for nothing. There are plenty of coffee shops around the hotel where you can actually taste the coffee, not like what is offered in the hotel. I loved coming to URBN. I still do, even though it is a shadow of what it used to be.

Hardware is really run down and tired, as is the "software". Having stayed here many times 2017, 2018, 2019 and now coming back to its current state was quite disappointing. Service has changed a lot, used to feel like a customer in a boutique hotel, compared to now, it seems like you have to beg for standard service. Very small details like dust in the closet racks, no hangers, noisy A/C, moldy ceilings in public areas, poor breakfast with terrible service, add up to rating the hotel low. Especially in comparison to what it used to be. There is still a lot of potential to this property, but for now, I would rate a 2.5/5. I'm guessing this is the reason it's no longer listed on Expedia.