Tai Hope Hotel

Very spacious rooms for Taipei standards - fairly clean and quiet accommodation. Hotel is about a 10 min walk to green and brown lines. Easy access to the eastern mountains and Maokong/Taipei Zoo. However, further away if you want to be around Taipei Main Station or Tamsui (about 1.25 hour's journey). Some nice shops around the hotel including a small night market close to Minquan road. The lobby comes with free coffees, juices and snacks. Hotel staff was nice. Breakfast was a couple of sandwiches that came by at 7:30 am, but they threw them away at 10:30 if unclaimed. Bus 1840 goes to Taoyuan directly in just 2 or 3 stops by highway (40 min).

The location is neither good nor bad, about a 10min walk from the nearest MRT (green line). It's neither good nor bad: good since it's quiet and far from the busy areas, bad since it can be tiring walking back to the hotel after a full day of walking around or can be a problem during rainy weather. The room was spacious for 2 people (I think it was bigger than what I saw in pictures actually), it was quiet (the only sound at night was the aircon), it had windows (for some reason, when I was looking for hotels I keep finding hotel rooms with suprisingly no windows), and it was clean. We had a good night's sleep all in all. The staff were very accomodating and very nice, they even gave us a food-and-drinks package on New Year's Eve as a gift! There's also free coffee and snacks in the lobby, perfect for a short break before heading out.

Like another reviewer, my company is nearby so I stayed here twice when my usual hotels were sold out. This hotel has several very nice staff member. They are professional, friendly and helpful, but it doesn't overcome how old and lacking the hotel is. 1) Smelly hallway and a generally unclean feeling. Guest room has peeling paint/wallpaper and signs of water damage. 2) No usable power outlets in the room! This goes to show how dated this hotel is. It sells itself as a business hotel but there is literally no place to plug in your computer or phone charger. 3) Non-working ACs. The ACs are very old and loud, to a point of disturbing our sleep, yet they can't seem to cool the room even in middle of December. 4) No or broken laundry facility. When asked, the staff will send you to public laundromats, which are across a busy major corridor and quite expensive. All in all, the rating should really be 2 stars but the staff edge it into a 3.