Novotel Beijing Xin Qiao — Hotel in Beijing

Hotel Management please take action against your dishonest employee at the Concierge Dest (on Sept 5 night)!!|To be fair to some of your other employees, like the check in staff we encountered on Sept 1st at the Front Desk were helpful.||This dishonest employee by the name of Sky Yang was at the Concierge desk on 5th Sept 2023 (around 8pm+) .|I went to the Concierge counter to get help to call a teksi to the airport and since he was in uniform and had a name tag, I had no reason to suspect that as an employee of a reputable hotel, he would turn out that he would be up to tricks and dishonest and to rip off tourist. ||I asked him to book a teksi for us to pick us at 9.15pm to take us to the airport. He said that he would and asked how we would pay for the teksi. I told him we will pay by cash as we did not have the China e-wallet app. Because I did not have the Alipay e wallet, he said he could help by using his app and I was to pay him cash. So kind of this guy to be so helpful?! NO! NOT AT ALL!!! This was his golden opportunity to cheat.| |I expected that the fare would be around RMB150-200 as we had earlier in the day asked a different staff and were informed that costs of a teksi to the airport would in that range.||To my surprise, when we were in the lobby and getting ready with our bags at around 9pm, and asked him how much we need to pay for the teksi, he said RMB300...to which I replied that it cannot be that expensive as earlier on we were informed that it was not more than RMB200. He came up with lies that toll charges is expensive (i noted when we passed one toll, it was only Rmb11) and he said because it was night time, costs is higher etc etc - all lies. ||I asked to see the app in which he placed the booking...and here is what this dishonest fella did; he showed me a screen for teksi charges ranging from Rmb200 - Rmb300...and as I could not read Chinese; i had no way to verify or challenge him that those charges was for teksi costs from Xinqiao Hotel to the Airport, and I could only continue to protest that it was much higher than what was informed to us earlier. I asked that he please check the price again. He insisted that that RMB300 was the price and that if we did not want the teksi, he would cancel it. Bear in mind that at this time it was already 9+pm and we needed to get to the airport. He kept up his pressure and threat by saying again that he would cancel. All this happening while we were in a hurry to get to the airport.|When we were about to board the teksi, I tried again to expose his lying and asked him to show me the receipt of his e-wallet payment, and Sky Yang (dishonest concierge staff of Beijing Novotel) said that only after journey completed will he get the receipt. At this juncture, I knew that there was no way to expose his dishonesty. So we paid him and boarded the teksi. I still had not given up on exposing this dishonest guy, so when we arrive at our destination, the Daxing Int' Airport, I asked the driver to show me his phone app for the charges and the driver did. His app showed charges of only Rmb154.58.|This dishonest staff of Beijing Xinqiao Hotel Sky Yang ripped us off an additional RMB145.42; pocketing it for himself!!|Are the staff in Beijing Xinqiao so poorly paid that they take every opportunity to cheat and rip off tourists so that some they can pocket som extra money??|Unfortunately Beijing Xinqiao, you have a dishonest concierge staff by the name of Sky Yang! and this is a real put off to ever patronizing Beijing Xinqiao Hotel again.|I hope he was not using someone else's name tag. Description of this guy - he wears specs, slim built and is about 5' 6 or so, not that tall. Xingqiao Management, please get the right guy and take action against him. ||Tourist - beware of this dishonest employee by the name of Sky Yang when you stay at Beijing Xingqiao. ||In some countries, hotels are more pro-active to prevent this kind of abuse by dishonest employees by displaying fare prices to common destination like airports. Please do something like this to prevent dishonest employees to rip off unsuspecting tourists.||While this hotel location is quite good as it is a few steps away from the subway train station, besides the dishonest employee experience, there are also some facilities which needs improvement; on our last day stay in a room in the older block, the bath tub water drainage was poor, hot water goes off intermittently, the furniture was old, so old that the fridge cupboard door which was rotting...

We stayed here as a family with our 2 year old son. We had an excellent hotel in Shanghai so this one was really disappointing. First of all on arrival at 16:30 we were told the room would not be ready for another hour although check in was 2pm. We were told we could have a free drink at the bar but when we arrived at the bar we were then told we could only have orange juice which isn’t really a complimentary ‘special’ drink. After waiting we were then told it would be another 40 minutes despite having a child and we were offered another room as we were unhappy with the service. ||The worst thing about this hotel for us was that the rooms absolutely stunk of cigarettes. I’ve never stayed in a hotel that smells this bad. It advertised itself as a non-smoking hotel however, the hotel happily allows their Chinese guests to smoke all day in their hotel room. The smoke is imbedded into the walls, carpets and in the air conditioning and people were smoking in other rooms which was coming through the extractor fan during the night. We complained to staff as we had a small child but they weren’t bothered at all. I also heard other people complaining about the bad smell of cigarettes at the reception. ||The family room was terrible, it was a dangerous room that had a wooden spiral staircase in it with an open drop from the top of the stairs. Please see the photo. We also struggled carrying 2 suits cases up. When complained to reception we were told all the family rooms have stairs. We expressed our concerns of having a 2 year old with this room and again, they were not bothered. How can these rooms be suitable for small children in any way? Extremely dangerous and made us feel nervous. ||The water was brown one morning when we wanted a shower so we couldn’t wash. The breakfast was terrible. Freezing cold food and was a zoo-like environment. They just allowed anyone to walk in without a table which meant there were no seats most mornings to have breakfast. ||We paid a lot of money to stay in this hotel and we both felt that it was a poor experience and service. I would never recommend this hotel to anyone. There are much nicer hotels that don’t smell...

Overall, the stay was not bad. Considering it is a hotel with history, it might not compare to top tier newly built hotels, but I still did enjoy my stay for the most part. I felt that the ventilation in the hallways could definitely be better, it was rather stuffy when I walked down the hallway everyday. The check out/check in line also took way too long (over 30 mins with only 4 people in front); there was definitely a shortage of hands. The worse part of my stay was at the end after I checked out. After checking out, I did luggage storage since I had my flight later in the day. When I came back to retrieve my luggage, there was a male security(?)/concierge(?) who came up to us when we had to fix our luggage last minute in the lobby saying that we were not allowed to do so, and that we “need to go somewhere else” to do stuff like that. Um EXCUSE ME? I paid for my stay and OK sure maybe it is not the best to fix my luggage in the lobby, but you don’t tell me to leave just because I am fixing my luggage and making you look bad, INSTEAD you should offer me a place to fix my luggage if you believe it is not proper for me to fix luggage in the lobby. Am I suppose to fix my luggage on the streets or on the subway? You tell me. Since I already checked out, I don’t have any room to go back into and for a concierge to kick a customer out just because I needed to fix my luggage is rude and disrespectful in my opinion. I have stayed at many hotels before, but service-wise, xinqiao is by far the worse. There are lots of foreigners staying at this hotel and they get great service. I am also a foreigner, but not foreign looking. Therefore I wonder, would I have been treated like this and get kicked out if I did not look Chinese and did not speak...