Century Hotel

Seeing from outside, the hotel restaurant had a luxury appearance. However, the food was VERY expensive and of extremely poor quality. We ordered Chinese roasted duck and backed spareribs, both dishes were un-eatable. It was obvious, based on common cooking experiences, that both dishes were backed several days ago and served after being heated up in microwave oven. Twenty minutes after we complained about the poor quality, the manager came to talk with us. He admitted that the food were of poor quality and offered to steam-damp the roasted spareribs! It was unbelievable! Both our children were still hungry afterwards, as they got only vegetables with cold white rice, although it was the most expensive meal we paid in Tibet during our 8 days holiday there. The restaurant seems to focus on spending more on good looking girls (based on their job announce posted outside of their main entry) than on normal level cook and reasonable service.

I DO NOT recommend this hotel at all. There are many better places to stay in Lhasa. First of all the location is horrible. It is nowhere near the major sights in Lhasa. The address says Beijing Middle Road but it really is located on Beijing West Road. On arrival at the hotel we were assigned to a room with soaking wet carpets. After complaining we were offered another room, with mostly dry carpets. There were still some large wet spots. How they thought this is acceptable is beyond my understanding. The beds were literally rock hard. Admittedly most Chinese hotels seem to favor firm mattresses but this was the worst of the lot. It was like sleeping on a concrete floor. We checked out after one night at this horrible hotel.

We booked through sinohotel.com and, as you can guess, when we arrived they had no trace of our reservation. Nobody speaks another language than tibetan, even their Mandarin is bad. We slept in a suite that was quite dirty and very, very smelly. They have sewage problem in the bathroom. If you are more than 175 cm tall, you will not fit in the shower. If you have a first floor room then you will either be waken by the road noise, or the small market noise or by the customers going to the breakfast room. The breakfast is very poor. I really recommand to avoid this one. Erick