Garden City Hotel

The hotel was in a good location. Room was clean enough as was the bathroom. The corridors could be cleaner. The check in (and check out) was challenging. The people behind the desk didn't speak very good English, it took far longer than it should have done to get into the room.

Location was the main positive about staying here for the couple of nights while we visited the pandas etc. It is very central and convenient for getting around, while there were some places locally for what we needed. Was clean enough and the staff very helpful.

I arrived here at about 10.30pm from a flight and was really tired. Instead the 2 Front Desk staff just ignored me and did other things for about 10 mins. Then I asked if they were going to give me a room and for some reason the girl at Front Desk laughed at me. Then I lost my temper and started yelling. Then there was a wait while she wrestled with an ancient photocopier that kept jamming while she tried to photocopy my passport. Photocopy over and I thought I would get my room. No such luck! Now she states that I have to pay for my room even though I have paid Agoda. I get even more upset and she calls the manager. Luckily the manager spoke English and she got me a room. The room was very average and showed the same poor maintenance and patching up as other Chinese hotels from the eighties. Cleaning wasn't too bad, though may not be up to Western standards. The young girl at Breakfast buffet was very helpful and even spoke a little English. I had problems again at checkout, the girl at front desk basically said I would have to pay for the room as she couldn't find the Agoda voucher. It took her 15 minutes to locate the voucher finally. This was an early morning checkout to catch a 7 am flight to Beijing and losing time like this at checkout wasn't good. To top it all off she wouldn't call me a taxi and I had to stand out in the rain with my luggage trying to hail a taxi. Not one staff member speaks English - for Chinese only. There were no facilities to speak of. There was some sort of travel counter, but utterly useless when I tried to book a tour and told me to take a taxi instead.