News Plaza Hotel — Hotel in Beijing

We stayed at this hotel for 5 nights on a group tour to Beijing. I prefer to make my own travel arrangements and staying at this hotel reinforced to me why.||||We attended a business conference in Shanghai and a group extension tour to Beijing was offered and we decided to go with the flow and join the group trip.||||The hotel rooms were very large and the soft furnishings included a 2 seater couch, an arm chair with ottoman, a desk and two large upright chairs. The furniture was in good order.||||We are a couple and we were allocated a room with twin beds, while other single members in the group were given king beds????? How does that work? Because of the language barrier (I speak no Chinese) I didn't bother trying to change.||||I think they must have had left over concrete when they built the hotel and they decided to use it to make the beds - honestly there was no softness to the beds at all, it was literally like sleeping on concrete.||||Our bed side lamps did not work, our toilet blocked and when we showered we were standing in 2 inches of water because the drain could not cope. The bar fridge was not in the cupboard allocated to the bar fridge but was in the cupboard under the TV. Again - why??? We were lucky to find it.||||We could not get the airconditioner to go below 23 degrees celcius and for us this was too hot for comfortable sleeping so we ended up opening the windows and listening to the traffic. ||||One area where I hope Asia catches up with the West is with "non-smoking" in hotel bedrooms, there were ash trays supplied, on the coffee table, on the sill next to the toilet, on the bedside table - YUK. Everything stunk of cigarette smoke, even my pillow and being an asthmatic I suffered for it. On speaking to others in the group, I think all the rooms were the same so we just put up with it.||||Breakfast was included in our rate and the buffet was substantially for Asian tastes. My partner had toast with jam every morning and I had poached eggs on toast as nothing else appealed to us as although we like all the noodles, pork buns, salad, vegetables etc that were on offer - just not for breakfast. ||||We had some good help from the concierge who helped us negotiate the subway, his English was reasonably good thankfully because as I said before my Chinese is non existant. We had trouble with taxi drivers not wanting to take us where we wanted to go and on the one occasion we persuaded one to take us we had to pay him double what was on the meter or he wouldnt let us in the cab. Thankfully we found it easy and very cheap to get around on the subway and there was a stop very close to the hotel. It just meant you were up close and personal with a LOT of strangers. The Silk market was two stops in one direction and Wangfujing Street one stop in the opposite direction. There was basically 6 flights of stairs to access the subway stop ( 6 x 18 steps - I counted) but we found you could exit via escalator across the road and use the walk way under the road if you are lazy like me and want to avoid climbing back up the six flights on your return.||||I would choose somewhere different to stay if I am ever in...

DO NOT STAY AT THIS HOTEL!!!||||I went out to Beijing to visit some friends over the past weekend 4/26/2015 to 4/28/2015. Stayed at this hotel for 2 days, I would not recommend you staying at this hotel||||As i was checking in, they told me that they were in the middle of construction, and that construction would be from 8:30am to 6pm. They asked me if I had a problem with this, my answer was no. On a side note, what was I suppose to say, yes? Where would I have stayed that night if that were the case? ||||Room: The room itself had problems since the moment I walked into the hotel. I noticed that the 1 of the phones wasn't working, and tried calling for the hotel lobby, but that said it didn't work. I also tried using the internet as that failed as well, I went downstairs and asked someone to come up to the room. The speed at which the person came to the room was about the only plus side this hotel had to offer. However, although he had gotten me onto the internet, the internet speed was horrible. I even had trouble loading baidu.com. Also, when i first entered the hotel room, I had turned on the AC, thinking that it's a hotel and it was hot, they would provide it. They do not prove AC in the hotel rooms in April is what they told me. I was baking inside the room like a smoked turkey.||||Bathroom: I normally go out to hotels for the bathtub. They have a nice and spacious tub however, the stopper in the tub didn't work and I had to ask hotel maintenance to fix it twice, and they still didn't get it fixed. The shower doesn't really keep water from going outside of it as the door doesn't close. When you leave the shower, it's like entering into a swimming pool of water.||||Service: As I mentioned above there service is fairly prompt, however they weren't able to help me with my problems.||||Transportation: On the plus side, this hotel is near a subway line, and it was close to where my friend was working. However, getting a cab at this hotel is next to impossible. The few times I had to get out and had the front desk call me a cab, the cabs took 10+ to get there or not at all.||||On a side note, they don't clean their restrooms that are on the first floor very frequently. The couple times that I had used them, the toilet-bowl was yellow.||||If you had a choice to stay somewhere else, I would not stay...

DO NOT STAY AT THIS HOTEL!!!||||I went out to Beijing to visit some friends over the past weekend 4/26/2015 to 4/28/2015. Stayed at this hotel for 2 days, I would not recommend you staying at this hotel||||As i was checking in, they told me that they were in the middle of construction, and that construction would be from 8:30am to 6pm. They asked me if I had a problem with this, my answer was no. On a side note, what was I suppose to say, yes? Where would I have stayed that night if that were the case? ||||Room: The room itself had problems since the moment I walked into the hotel. I noticed that the 1 of the phones wasn't working, and tried calling for the hotel lobby, but that said it didn't work. I also tried using the internet as that failed as well, I went downstairs and asked someone to come up to the room. The speed at which the person came to the room was about the only plus side this hotel had to offer. However, although he had gotten me onto the internet, the internet speed was horrible. I even had trouble loading baidu.com. Also, when i first entered the hotel room, I had turned on the AC, thinking that it's a hotel and it was hot, they would provide it. They do not prove AC in the hotel rooms in April is what they told me. I was baking inside the room like a smoked turkey.||||Bathroom: I normally go out to hotels for the bathtub. They have a nice and spacious tub however, the stopper in the tub didn't work and I had to ask hotel maintenance to fix it twice, and they still didn't get it fixed. The shower doesn't really keep water from going outside of it as the door doesn't close. When you leave the shower, it's like entering into a swimming pool of water.||||Service: As I mentioned above there service is fairly prompt, however they weren't able to help me with my problems.||||Transportation: On the plus side, this hotel is near a subway line, and it was close to where my friend was working. However, getting a cab at this hotel is next to impossible. The few times I had to get out and had the front desk call me a cab, the cabs took 10+ to get there or not at all.||||On a side note, they don't clean their restrooms that are on the first floor very frequently. The couple times that I had used them, the toilet-bowl was yellow.||||If you had a choice to stay somewhere else, I would not stay...