Taichung Saint Hotel

Pretty standard for a downtown 3-star hotel, but rather cheap - got a deal with NTD 1,828 for a family room for one night. The downside is bathroom smells like someone smoked in there recently. No tips required, but one of my family members tipped anyway.

We stayed in this hotel for 3 weeks, and is very satisfied with the overall experience. The hotel has an unusual entrance, to be at the back of the building and hotel rooms start at 7F up, the building might have a different purpose when it was built. While the lower floors has a KTV and computer shop, both of which is not tied to the hotel and run their own business. Most of the room are designed for families, 3-4 adults per room with 2 queen beds. Wifi is accessible in all rooms, and there's a water dispenser in the odd floors (7,9, and 11) We booked a room for two, and eventually got lucky that the room assigned to us is quite spacious. Breakfast is included in your bookings, where they offer a good variety (sauteed vegetables, eastern meat varieties, steamed buns, congee, soup, loaf of bread, for drinks they have grape,orange,soy milk, and of course coffee). The staff are generally nice and polite. They also have laundry machine for self-service washing. Summary: The hotel is quite nice, it has all the basics, rooms are modern and its affordable. There's also a cinema just a few meters away, and a number of local restaurants. Unfortunately, there's not much in the area probably as it's on the far side of Taichung, but if you have a car, or don't mind taking the bus, or is going to places nearby, it won't be a concern, and this would be a good choice. Tip: by any means, please avoid room 722/3 and 922/3 as the room is very different than most rooms (please see complaint on another review). Not sure though, on this room's purpose? maybe it's intended for staff?

If only I looked at these reviews before booking this hotel. As other reviewers pointed out, the staff all smoke outside the front door. So my partners and I had to walk through smoke to get to the lobby. The lobby also stank of cigarette smoke. If you have asthma or any other breathing condition you would suffer terribly. The lobby looks modern and so do the hallways but each of our rooms was old, simple, dirty, run-down and broken. The staff put on a show with bowing and trying to be extra polite, but they don't understand that it is the 21st Century. Smoking should be completely absent from a hotel. And the rooms need serious renovation. The photos they have on the hotel booking sites are very misleading. Their photos make you think this is a clean, modern, business hotel. But its more like a budget motel that needed renovating 10 years ago. Yet, they still charge you a high price. Don't waste your money on this dump.