Intercontinental Foshan New City — Hotel in Foshan

Foshan, Guangdong Province. What was once a hub for the Chinese martial arts and Cantonese culinary paradise, now turned into a growing economic center. Located not too far from the culinary hub Shunde, the metropolitan city of Guangzhou, and the Pearl Delta; it is a city full of traditional Cantonese vibrant cultures that makes this part of Guangdong province unique. Shunde is considered one of oldest district of Foshan, which now boosts its economy in newer regions of Foshan into the Foshan New City.||The Poly Development Company holds two hotel properties in the Foshan area, both InterContinental Hotels: One in the bustling center of Dongping, the other in the Qiandeng Lake area. I came to Foshan to investigate this unique phenomenon of the same developmental company holding multiple hotels in one hotel and to see the types of services the InterContinental hotels provide in Foshan. This review is for the 2021 opened InterContinental Foshan Dongping Hotel.||Located in Dongping, a rapidly developed area mostly owned by the Poly Development Company themselves, the hotel is sits right next to the Dongping subway station and a short walk to the Binjiang Wetland Park. The hotel overlooks the Century Lotus Stadium, which is a football stadium for the local team. I booked a Classic room for just under 1000 RMB ($139), which was later upgraded via my Diamond Ambassador Membership to the 1 King Junior Suite Century Lotus View. ||I arrived at the hotel via subway and observed the Foshan-style artworks and signature dancing lion animatronics around this grand lobby space. The key highlight for me is the grand mural depicting Ancient Foshan above the marble tiled front desks. Greeting me at the IHG One Rewards Desk was the Front Desk Agent Lexi Huang. She introduced me to the Club InterContinental benefits I have and the facilities around the hotel including the breakfast location at Cafe Aqua. This was done in a quick 5 minute check-in. ||The 1 King Junior Suite is actually a rather small 50 SQM (500 SQFT) space with a standard sized bedroom, small Samsung TV seating area, a marble working desk, a bathroom with a separate bathtub and shower, a closet space, and a small hallway. The overall interior design is a set of modernized wooden walls with an abstract carpet, leather seating, and black & white marble bathroom. When you think about it and compare it the standard rooms, the two categories space rise only accounts for an additional 2 SQM from Standard Room to Junior Suite. The bedroom’s most unique feature is the lighting panels that set different mood lightings in the suite. A nice touch in the bedroom is the JBL Bluetooth speaker, a phone charging wire, a minibar cabinet with a Nespresso Machine, and plenty of USB ports. The bathroom has unique Calmac Soap amenities that aligns with much of the Poly’s InterContinental Hotels’ soap products over the standard Byredo Blanche. It is finished off with a Dyson hair dryer set. In the evening, the bed is turned down with a glass of water and a set of comfortable single use eye masks. ||Cleaning seemed to be a problem in the suite, as I saw many issues with hair and weird stains along many areas of the room including the towels, marble stables, and floor. I was promptly switched from Suite 1921 to 1821 by the Duty Manager Anthony He, who attentively helped arrange a tour for me of the hotel’s facilities. For the first time ever however, neither the Assistant Front Office Manager or the Front Office Manager were present at the hotel on-duty, which usually would make things rather complicated for the Front Office and Desk. Anthony however, made sure the operations were completely under-control. ||I was given a tour of the hotel for my review, and helping me give a tour of the hotel’s facilities were the Food & Beverage Department Managers and the Club InterContinental Duty Supervisor Hector Hu. I was first given a tour of the restaurants, which were given by various managers of each restaurant.||Cafe Aqua + Lobby Lounge: Cafe Aqua is the hotel’s All-Day Dining Restaurant. Cafe Aqua offers a modern designed restaurant with minimal special features to its interior design, with comfortable leather seating and marble tables. The hotel on an occasional basis provides a dinner buffet service and an a-la-carte service on other days. Breakfast buffet is also held here and I will discuss the service later on in the review. The lobby lounge is directly adjacent to the restaurant, providing drink services and a comfortable seating area for guests of all kinds. ||Canal Luna: The hotel’s Chinese restaurant specializing in Cantonese cuisine specifically related to the region of Shunde. The restaurant’s atmosphere holds a Foshan-inspired interior design with printed photography and modernized lighting for the bright restaurant mood. In addition to opening for lunch and dinner, Canal Luna offers a Dim Sum Buffet during the brunch service. I had a chance to review the buffet and its menu, and the quality of choices for its given entry price of ¥129 RMB ($18) is actually nice and reasonable from choices such as the Steamed Shrimp Dumplings, Steamed Abalone Siu Mai with Black Truffle, and a Poached Grouper. ||CHAR Restaurant: The hotel’s signature American-inspired steakhouse. It is an open-kitchen restaurant concept serving gourmet dishes such as the USDA Prime Ribeye Steak. This modern space examines intimate minimalistic interior decorations that make the signature dishes the highlights, such as the emphasis on the cows statues scattered around the tables and the beef inspired murals on the walls. The tradition at this restaurant is that you eat a steak with a knife of your choosing, different types of mustard, and salt. CHAR is also found in IHG’s Shanghai Indigo Hotel along the Huangpu River, where the renowned YouTuber “Max the Meat Guy” discovered his ambitions of cooking which led to his fame. CHAR has also won Michelin guides in other branches of its network. ||After my tour of the restaurants, I was invited by the Club InterContinental Duty Supervisor Hector Hu to fulfill my requests of taking a look at some of the rooms, suites, and other facilities yet to be covered. First, we took a look at the following accommodations:||1 King Classic Room Club Lounge Access: A 48 SQM room with a basic yet luxurious bedroom, separate toilet room and bathroom, closet space, and desk space. ||1 King Bedroom Suite: A 78 SQM suite with its own living room, separate work desk space, and much of what’s found in the Junior Suite with the exception of a Japanese toilet.||Presidential Suite: A presidential suite with its own high ceiling living room, dining room, kitchen, study room, yoga room, enlarged bathroom, sauna room, massage room, and bedroom. ||Hector also let me have a look at the indoor heated swimming pool that contains hot tubs within the changing rooms. An outdoor pool directly outside remains closed for the winter. The best part of the pool is the natural light allowed from the glass ceiling to the bottom. The fitness center also holds a variety of exercise equipment. A SPA Center is conveniently opposite to the gym. In addition, the Patio is also on the same floor which houses an outdoor event space for outdoor weddings.||The Club InterContinental was run and supervised by Hector at the time of my stay with the manager absent. It is a space that holds plenty of comfortable modernized seating with lounge sofas or marble dining tables. There is also a meeting room and enclosed seating rooms for private talks. Foshan is a city known for superb furniture of the Chinese influence. This takes on a more modern outlook on furniture and aligns itself as a calming, luxurious atmosphere to relax and enjoy Afternoon Tea or Happy Hour. Afternoon Tea consists of an a-la-carte set with either Chinese or Western options. The western set comes in a Cantonese-style trio deck with a Smoked Salmon on baguette, egg salad sandwich, scones, macaroons, cakes, and some fruit. The Chinese set comes with Chinese pastries and fruits. Happy Hour consisted of an a-la-carte menu consisting of items such as Poached Soy Chicken, Lamb Chop, Beef Salad, etc… A solid selection for a barely visited Club Lounge.||Breakfast to say the least was decent for the most part at the Cafe Aqua. The choices could be more abundant when it perhaps comes to the western options such as the lack of breakfast potatoes. The self-service juice machine is something that I wouldn’t really do from a contamination standpoint, I would just pre-make the fresh juice and put it in single serving cups. This way, there would be a more cleaner experience. The wonton soup I had although was tasty, should have had the soup applied to the bowl once the wontons are finished to prevent the wonton skin from sticking to the bowl. I however liked the chefs bringing freshly-steamed Chang Fen Rice Rolls and scrambled eggs to the table. It is a good touch to elevate service. ||It was time to move onto the other Foshan InterContinental. At checkout, I was greeted by the Front Office Manager Kyrene Yang. Kyrene assured me that such cleaning problems were out of their control, and it was the Poly Development Company who contracted workers to clean the bed sheets and towels to the lack of InterContinental standards. Because both InterContinental Hotels are owned by Poly Development, Kyrene got the InterContinental Foshan Hotel to upgrade me to a suite upon my arrival. Thanks Kyrene! She also invited me back to get an automatic upgrade to the 1 King Bedroom Suite. ||Overall, a pretty solid stay for an InterContinental Hotel that opened during the pandemic and struggled during the economic recovery. As long as the hotel keeps the cleaning standards in check at the hotel, it is a perfect hotel to stay at its given price. The hotel has yet to improve with the hygiene and breakfast standards, but with time I trust we will see the hotel improve. With that said I look forward to staying again!||Personal InterContinental Rankings:||Hotel Ranking: #13 out of 34 InterContinental Hotels I have visited globally.||Club InterContinental Rankings: #7 out of 29 Club Lounges I have visited.||Chinese InterContinental Buffet Breakfast: #15 out of 23 InterContinental Buffet Restaurants in...

This has been a very disappointing stay. We chose to be loyal IHG customers because we trust the consistency of hotel quality and we had very good experience with our previous Intercontinental Hotels stays elsewhere. However, the Foshan Dongping Intercontinental has made us question that consistency now, so this is gonna be a very long review.

Poor management during peak season

The management of the breakfast was absolutely disastrous. It was full with ppl. No staff was helping any guest to find an available table. It was all packed and we together with many other guests were just walking around cluelessly trying to see which table was done so we can take over. It took us a good 5 min to secure a temporarily added table with massive done dishes. Then we asked a staff to clean the table for us, which took another good 5 min. She sprayed alcohol cleanser on the table cloth… which could not clean away the food stains on the table at all! Never mind we asked for napkin to just cover the stained portion. Then we were told they ran out of clean napkin so we were given disposable ones, then we were told again they ran out of folks, spoons and knives (there aren’t even disposable version of those) so we were only given chopsticks… I am sure the hotel knows how many guests stay in the hotel over holiday season yet there seems to be zero planning in advance to ensure customer experience can be maintained. What is the management team of this hotel doing?

Kids friendly hotel?

This hotel is ranked top 1 kids friendly hotel in Foshan on trip.com, yet our friend’s 3-year-old son was so freighted by the lions in the hotel lobby throughout his stay. Understand the purpose is to establish a linkage between the hotel and the local culture, which I totally agree it’s a very brilliant idea and often times I find it interesting and warm to see. However, the two lions did look a bit scary and not very kids friendly after all. Not just my friend’s son was scared, I saw at least 5 to 6 kids being frightened by the lions during my 3 day stay there. Why not put sth that appeals to a wider age group instead?

Polite staff, but quality of service is not detailed enough

Staff are generally polite, I can feel their good intention but their service level is still not up to standard. I can’t tell they have enough training to understand what is truly good service. One example is upon check in, despite we have indicated during room booking that we were traveling with a 3-year old, we were told there is no kids potty in the room and that can’t be arranged, because that was only available in family rooms and we only booked standard rooms. Upon repeated requests, we then found out kids potty was actually available as well and room service brought that to our room afterwards. Small details, but it is all these details that will differentiate a truly good hotel. Unfortunately I don’t see that...

This is the second time staying at this hotel. I have to say, I think this is the best hotel in Foshan. The food is amazing, ther service is very attentive and polite without being intrusive, and there are a lot of amenities, especially for families. We travelled with our family friends and both have five year old boys. They were in heaven at this hotel! They played in the ball room, swam in the pool, and played in the giant inflatable bouncy playground. They were exhausted by the time the day was over and extremely happy! We purchased the package that includes the dinner and breakfast buffet and I highly recommend doing so. The value for money is amazing. The dinner buffet was beyond description. The food quality was very high. The sashimi, beef, and desserts were of higher quality than any of the other five stay hotels in Foshan that I've dined at. They had a large variety of alcohol at the self-serve bar but also had a drinks cart with a bartender hand-shaking drinks to order. The desserts belonged in a French patisserie, and the ice cream was very high quality. The rooms at this hotel are so nicely decorated, and I loved the city view from the floor to ceiling windows. This hotel is still very new so the rooms are in excellent condition. I recommend this hotel to anyone travelling for business or with family. It is a versatile hotel. And for business travellers, do not worry, despite all the amenities, the hotel is not overrun with children. It is a very quiet hotel and not very busy. The rooms are well insulated for noise and the blackout curtains are phenomenal. Also, I need to mention that we were looked after by Barbara and she made sure everything was perfect! Her service was fantastic and she went out of her way to make us feel taken care of. She is definitely an asset...