The Hotel Zen Urban Resort — Hotel in Chengdu

The Hotel Zen Urban Resort (I stayed there 3 nights and I could never get the words in the right order) is in a reasonable location in Chengdu and has lovely rooms. They really are Zen as the name suggests, with tasteful decor and well-maintained. It was a lovely place to sleep. ||||The hotel didn’t seem to be full but it was quiet and peaceful, apart from one businessman at breakfast who had not yet learned that he need not talk into his phone as though communicating over the entire distance of the call. Of course if you have travelled at all in China then you must know it was a relief to have only one such other guest instead of many.||||Contrary to what the hotel listing says, there is no restaurant. There is room service, which would have been lovely but the staff speak such poor English that it is virtually impossible to order, even with the usual translation apps that had gotten us by in far more remote parts of China. This is not an exaggeration: it actually took us two days of staying at the hotel and several conversations with the receptionist over those days to ascertain that there is no restaurant and that room service ends at 8pm. Maybe after a few more days we would've discovered what is on the menu! In fairness, we are the foreigners and we are at fault for not speaking Chinese, but perhaps we expected too much based on other reviews.||||For what it's worth, we rarely eat at hotel restaurants and prefer to explore the area, but with a packed itinerary in Chengdu we were looking forward to an easy evening meal, and the room had a lovely table setup perfect for room service. Other reviews suggest there are plenty of nice restaurants around - which is great when you have time to look for them - but we didn't appreciate having to scour the streets after a really long day. This communication issue was really the only letdown of an...

The hotel's theming attracts a certain kind of domestic clientele, who, if you've ever travelled in China, can be a deciding factor of whether your stay will be enjoyable.||||The mandarin-speaking Chinese travellers sharing the common areas and breakfast areas were respectful, not boisterous and smoked outside. This is HUGE.||||This hotel is firmly in the middle if not leaning towards the budget end of things but you definitely get your monies worth and then some. Breakfast selection is varied and healthy with plenty of clean vegetables. The bacon ain't like it is back home but you get enough pork travelling through China anyways.||||Located in a music school district, its quiet at night and there's soothing string music wafting from nearly dorms during the day. The ambient cricket sounds they pipe in the common areas are a nice touch. There are lots of buddhist knick knacks, art and statues on the 4th floor but I've been assured all are inanimate and definitely not haunted.||||I left my bank and credit cards behind and they promptly notified my team over WeChat and mailed (SF express) it to my next hotel two provinces over in under three days. It was so secured (quadruple wrapped and sealed with a few too many staples which were kind of comforting) I may not reset all my cards when I get back.||||You will need a Google Translate with your native language and Chinese preloaded since the G's services are blocked in country, but the staff are very nice and patient and you probably already have a system worked out if you made it this far into China.||||A western guest at breakfast said the beds were a bit too hard for her taste, but its a firm 7.5/10 IMHO at this price...

We arrived there at about 10pm and realised that their hot water system was down for the whole hotel! Hot water was not available for the next few days. Did not want to change hotel as it was late. They could give us 20% discount or refund us for the remaining unused days. Since we booked through an agent, we did not want to risk not able to get back the refund when back to SG. So we sought for an upgrade instead. Their staff brought us hot water in container daily. ||||The hotel is located along a main road but not easily visible. We need to tell the taxi drivers where to stop, that is near 15th street.. Not many taxis are keen to go there as Longjiang Road is a single traffic driveway. ||||There is a 24-hour convenient shop besides this hotel. Staff are very friendly. Room is clean. The building is Zen-design so very unique.||||Breakfast is reasonable, room rates - cheaper if we can book direct with...