City Line Hotel Beijing — Hotel in Beijing

City Line||||Booked a standard room on Agoda for about US$45 a night (including service charge and hotel tax). The hotel had been known for many years until recently as Harmony Hotel (or Hua Mei Lun in Chinese), so most taxi drivers may still be more familiar with the old name. Taxi from Beijing Capital International Airport to the hotel cost 96RMB. Check-out is at noon or by 1pm at the latest upon request. ||||Reception||||I speak Chinese so not sure about the English proficiency of the receptionists. I did not find them to be rude or anything. Check-in/out was quick. They do store your luggage after check-out if you have a late flight. ||||||Location||||The hotel is just off the busy Jianguomen Inner Street and is 2km from Tiananmen Square. It is within walking distance to the Beijing train station. The closest subway stop is Exit A of the Beijing Railway Station. There aren't that many tourist attractions in immediate surrounding. The street on which it is located is a bit run-down (there is a small recycling station a few steps away), but there are a couple of convenience stores and several more local eateries (noodles, etc). A block away is a major intersection where you will find bigger hotels and the Henderson Shopping Center, which houses a bigger supermarket, a few restaurants and a bustling food court in its lower floors. ||||There are about several small local restaurants near the hotel, including a convenience store/restaurant that serves BBQ during the evening. Further away near the Beijing Railway Station are more restaurants and shops, including Chinese and Western fast food chains. ||||There appears to be strict rules regarding taxi picking up passengers in front of the hotel, but some do it anyway. Otherwise, you can easily catch a taxi on near the Beijing Railway Station (but not on Jianguomen Inner Street where curb-side stopping/parking is strictly prohibited) ||||Bedroom||||Apparently the rooms have been renovated and the wallpaper still look very fresh. It is a non-smoking room, but I was still glad that there is no cigarette smells as is usually the case in many Chinese hotels, where guests more often than not ignore the non-smoking rule. The bed is on the hard side and there is only one pillow and one cushion provided for each bed (there are two beds in the room). ||||It is not terribly spacious but is adequate when compared to a standard/twin room in Hong Kong of a similar price range, which tends to be claustrophobic.||||There aren't that many easily accessible sockets in the bedroom. I had to pull the work desk a little bit away from the wall to reach one socket.||||I was here in early April, and central heating has already been turned off, but it was not very cold in the room, so it was fine. Although it would have been nice if the fan function is working to provide a little circulation during the night. Instead, the window can be slid open slightly (but not all the way as there is a stopper). ||||The walls are a bit thin so it would be advisable to ask for a room away from the elevators, where there are also conference rooms. Rooms with odd number face the back while those with even number face the front. ||||Bathroom||||The doors of the shower stall do not close completely so water may get on the floor. The shower stall itself could have been a bit bigger considering there is some unused space. Water pressure though is quite adequate and the water warms up quickly. ||||One minor complaint is that the bathroom light takes a good 7 seconds to turn on.||||||Internet||||There is free wifi signal on each floor, but it is very weak. I wonder if the signal would be stronger depending on the proximity of your room to the signal source. However, I noticed the signal appears to be stronger on my smartphone but it was still spotty. ||||Amenities||||Two pairs of white slippers||Toothbrush sets||Shower cap||Shampoo and bath liquid in dispensers attached to the wall in the shower||Electric water kettle||Two ceramic teacups with lids||Alarm clock||A work desk with a lamp||Small flatscreen TV||Two armchairs and a coffee table||A closet by the door with wooden cloth hangers||Minibar items for which you need to pay (two 1.5L bottled water, two cup noodles, and two cans of soda)||Two hand towels and two bath towels||||Although there is an empty slot beneath where the water kettle is, which appears to be designed for a small fridge, there isn't one. In the summer, I would imagine a fridge will definitely be appreciated and useful. It would have also been nice to have complimentary bottled water considering Beijing's tap water is not drinkable. The bottled water at the minibar cost 15 yuan but you could buy one for 4 yuan in the convenience store just across the street. There is also no safe in the room, but one is available at the reception. ||||When they cleaned my room, for some reason they did not clean the cups and put them back to the...

I booked this hotel through CTrips. I emailed the hotel a couple months before I arrived to confirm our booking and I received an email back from the hotel, which was all well and good. |My friend and I were stuck on the tarmac in Hong Kong for a couple hours and we emailed the hotel saying we would be a couple hours later than expected but we’re still coming. We got no email back. which made us 3 hours late for check in. |So we arrived 3 hours later at the hotel and you’d think that would have been been ok...but no. We arrived at our and only to find out our reservation had been canceled. No one spoke english so we were communicating via a translation app. My friend and I got frustrated because it was 9pm and and we were two 20 year old girls stuck in a foreign city with no accomodation . Long story short they had given our room to someone else and they blamed CTrip for letting them cancel the reservation. We burst into tear and they said there was so rooms available and that they don’t use email in China..... I call bs. We contributed to cry because we were over tired. To stop us from crying they said they had a room for one night and it was over priced for what it was. We took it because we had no other choice. We needed to get internet but you can’t get free wifi at city line because you need a Chinese sim and you can’t get it without a Chinese ID and you can’t get a Chinese ID without being chinese. So the receptionist was nice enough to let us use his wifi code. Once we got it it was ok so we managed to book a new hotel for the rest of our stay. |The next morning we woke up to the smell of cigarette smoke in our room (it’s a non smoking hotel) and there were a bunch of Chinese men outside our room smoking... |Our room also had no window (which was ok for us but some people may not like it) |||The room itself was nice but customer service was not great at all and I wouldn’t recommend the hotel or CTrip to anyone. I contacted Ctrip and they blamed the hotel... I said they were blaming each other then Ctrip blamed my friend and...

Decent hotel. Better than a hostel. Don't count on English. Breakfast could use work.||Rooms were small, but clean and had all the essentials and were in a pretty good state of repair. Shower area is just a wee square area of the bathroom, with a curtain covering one side. You'll splash, and that's life... just use the floor mat to catch the run-off and then it's their problem to clean up. No fridge in room, but there IS an electric water boiler, a few free tea packets and some basic food and drink fare for cheap...ish. 1.5L bottle of water is 10 RMB. That's about $1.50 (US). Downstairs and literally right in front of the hotel is a market that sells the same exact thing for 3 RMB ($0.47).||Location... Hotel is right around the corner from Exit A of the Beijing Railway Station. To get there, go up the stairs from Exit A, make a U-turn to your left, go to the corner and turn right. Hotel will be about 50m down on your left.||WARNING: Do not make the reservation for any time before you arrive, worst case scenario. They say if you're more than 15 minutes late, they'll cancel the reservation. I got lucky and got rooms anyway. Just saying... be conservative in your worst case time estimate.||Breakfast: NOT CHEAP (about 50 RMB). Great variety... if you're Chinese. Not suited for the western palette. Fare doesn't really change from day to day. Only thing we found we could eat were some fried eggs (luke warm), fresh fruit (good), and white toast. The rest was all carbs and all Chinese...