CSCEC Yanqi Hujing Hotel — Hotel in Beijing

I was forced to stay in this hotel because it was the venue of the conference which I attended. They say that this hotel was built to host the BRICS summit several years ago and now they try to welcome every other conference to fill it. The view from the 15th floor on the Yan Qi Lake was good. The standard room was spacious, beds were big and comfortable. Free WiFi is good enough to use Skype and Whatsapp. Be aware that Facebook and Google are blocked in China, so if you have your mailbox with Gmail you will not have an access to it.||Bathroom has all necessary amenities, but the floor seemed to me not very clean, especially in the toilet zone.||Air conditioning worked poorly and it was hot in the room, even opened windows did not help.||The hotel does not have Money Changing service so one have to change their dollars, Euro, etc. at the airport before coming to the hotel, because in either case you will not have local money (yuan Renminbi) even to hire a taxi. By the way, the hotel is situated 60 km away from Beijing City Centre and it will cost you RMB500,- and take 2 hours drive to get there (one way). You can go to Huairou Town (12 km) but you must insist that the hotel manager call the taxi company to send a car to pick you up. In this case your trip will cost you RMB30,- one way. Do not hire a taxi which are standing the whole day near the gates to the hotel territory. They will charge you RMB 100,- for the same trip without switching on a taximeter.||The English name of the hotel is Swan...

Check-in was a mess and slow. People crowded around the desk in a mass. No organization, no helping by hotel staff to help people queue up in a more peaceful orderly fashion, just a jumble of people. Unprofessional staff.||||Big Hotel lots of rooms. The rooms and facilities were clean but, we were given a non-smoking room that smelled of smoke in the bathroom, especially in the shower stall. || The bed was typical Chinese hotel bed, hard and uncomfortable. I have a bad back so was left sore in the morning.|| "Mini-bar" was an extremely generous term for what was there. Bar's usually have alchohol and drinks, not just water and a mini-fridge that is turned on to such a warm setting as to be more of a cabinet than a fridge.||Breakfast was free, not good, just free. They said there were two restaurants for breakfast. The one we went to was actually not a restaurant at all but a big meeting hall filled with tables, bad food and the typical Chinese version of Orange Juice which is actually more like Orange colored water which tasted like a very week Orange powdered drink mix, extremely diluted. No assigned tables, no staff to bring you to a table and all the tables are big so you end up taking space together with other people. Not something I like to do first thing in the morning. I like a quiet breakfast with my family/friends not with ill mannered noisy strangers.||Insufficient garage space so half of our group had to find space outside. ||If I visit this lake again (doubtful) I'd try to...

The service needs improvement. ||There are only two restaurants in the hotel, one is Chinese restaurant and the other one is mainly western style buffet restaurant. The hotel hosts lots of meetings. The Chinese restaurant is often booked by the meetings. We were there four nights, and three nights we were told that we couldn't eat at the Chinese restaurant. My mom is 84 years old Chinese lady, doesn't like western style food. There are no other restaurants nearby, and impossible to find a taxi. We c/o inconvenience three times to different persons the last night we stayed, finally we got a special treatment, we ate in a special room with Chinese food. My mom was very happy. ||The receptionists at the front desk never smiled. The last day around 8:30am I asked if I could take a luggage cart to our room, I was told that they would send it to us, if I called them when we were ready. Around 9:30am I called, and was told they were busy, we needed to wait for a while. Since our driver was waiting for us downstairs, I went down to pick up the luggage cart by myself, what I found shocked me, three luggage cart and one doorman were free standing there! What a service!||It is a 4 -5 star hotel, but there are no safe box and no small refrigerator. I was told by a receptionist that the safe box and refrigerator were for luxury room only. We stayed in a luxury lake view room.||By the way, the hotel is not near the lake, so the view from Lake view room is blocked by a tall building...