InterContinental Fuzhou — Hotel in Fuzhou City

It seems like IHG are ok to devalue the Intercontinental brand in 2nd/3rd tier Chinese cities - one should not expect the service you would get in other Intercontinental hotels abroad. I have stayed at International hotels in Foshan, Huizhou and Qingdao and they all did not meet expectations (the only one which did, in fact exceeded was Zhuhai, probably due to the competition from Macau).

-most staff can not speak English here (the odd one at the club lounge and if you’re lucky one at reception). It was a challenge checking in - I suggest they look at employing a translation tool/app to communicate if they can’t speak the language.

-check in was poor. As the staff could not speak English, they could not acknowledge and greet me as a spire ambassador, let me know about the benefits/upgrade (did not have anything printed either like most other hotels have), and failed to give the RMB120 spend voucher which I had to ask

-the hotel is 4-5 years old but feels a good several years old now, we were upgraded to a room on the top (club?) 33rd floor. Standard sized rooms for a holiday inn and smaller than usual for an intercontinental. Some of the furnishings seemed worn out and not well maintained eg green mould like stains on bathroom flooring. There is no working USB outlet in the room so make sure to bring the plugs for charging.

-club lounge was standard, generally more variety of food available and less variety of drinks.

-Quality, taste and presentation of food was pretty poor overall; we tried F&B at the club lounge, breakfast, room service and also a take away breakfast. One day we had to leave at 6am for Wuyi Mountain at 6am and it was a challenge to get a basic breakfast. We went to the breakfast venue to enquire and had to ask for the manager to try and accommodate; were initially offering sliced bread, and apple or pear and yoghurt (probably what I would get at a holiday inn express!). Asking for a sandwich, milk or juice was out of the question. Ended up being croissants, apple/pear and yoghurt - and they still got it wrong! And they even asked us to call reception to request this again after explaining/agreeing with them?!

Breakfast spread was average, but food was not being replenished, even basics! I ordered an egg 15 minutes before close and never got it. Couldn’t be bothered to follow up again.

-staff was probably a total let down and the worst part of the experience. Not a single staff member we interacted with had a smile and were in fact rude at times (the first person we spoke to request the take out breakfast was condescending with his comments to his manager colleague thinking we didn’t understand any putonghua at all!). Maybe only one at the club lounge had the attitude to go the extra mile, but needs training.

Even at breakfast when I ordered an egg and went back it wasn’t ready 10 min later and asked again and never got it!

All in all, a complete disappointment; the worst InterContinental I’ve been to. If I were to return to Fuzhou, I would probably try the crowne plaza or even a non-IHG (there is a 5...

I had a business trip to Fuzhou by end January and stayed in InterContinental Fuzhou for two nights.

I stayed in a 70 sqm Executive Room which was spacious and elegantly desgined. It had a large bathroom with a separated toilet, shower room and was equipped with a full-sized island bath tub, a bench, two water basins and much storage space for my personal items.

The sitting room featured a round table which was large enough for fitting 4 persons working together, a 3-seater sofa plus two armchairs and a large oval shaped coffee table. The facilities and setup in this sitting room allowed me to conduct some private meetings with my business associates in my own room; it was convenient and time saving.

The Hotel is located within few minutes walking from the Chating Subway Station from there it is only 7 stops to Fuzhou Railway Station for taking the intercity high speed trains. As the traffic in Fuzhou is quite terrible during the rush hours so this Hotel is a preferred choice for those travellers who take a high speed train for their travel. It is an hour drive to the Changle Airport it is the same for all the hotels located in the city centre.

I had a dinner in the Fortune Mansion Chinese Restaurant which offers a fusion menu covering both the local Fuzhouese food and the Cantonese food with extensive choices of seafood. It was a great dinner. Not only the quality of food, the taste and the presentation of dish were all awesome, the portion of each dish was quite large. However there is much room for improvements on the breakfast at the Stage Restaurant. The seating was not comfortable and the services were certainly not up to InterContinental standards. I came to the cooking station requesting for an omelet and informing the cook what ingredients to be included in my omelet. His phone was rang up and the cook stopped the food preparations and picked up the call. He then walked away to continue his phone call. I had to wait for over 5 minutes for him to come back for resuming the cooking. Most of the hot dishes featured in the breakfast were not warmed up properly particularly the congees. Unexpectedly the Restaurant did not offer custom brewed tea. The guests could only had tea from the pre-brewed glass teapot.

The services from the front desk and the concierge desk were extremely excellent. InterContinental Fuzhou is located in the tallest building in Fuzhou and the guest rooms are spacious and well designed it is strange that its front desk and the lobby bar is packed in a small area. It is the smallest front desk of all the InterContinental Hotels I ever stayed.

Overall it was an...

I would say I was quite impressed by the staffs services. They are polite, helpful, professional and warm-hearted. They gave me the feeling that they would make their biggest effort to make my stay happy.

I would have given a THREE stars if it is not because of the staffs. I stayed 9 nights in the hotel.

pros

As a IHG member I received welcome drink vouchures.

Using running robots to send me the take out food improved the service and security.

All hotel rooms are above lvl 20 so offer a sensatonal view of the fuzhuo city.

Rooms are relatively new and clean

Hotel staffs are very helpful and easy to communicate. Big thank to Wilson and another two young guys who help me to arrange currency exchange which save me a big time wating in the bank.

Restaurant has a good various choices of food. The smoke salmon is very fresh, tendor and not too salty

Cons

AIR-CON is not working properly for cooling. It was like living in the microwave if you go back to hotel room during the sunny day as the hotel only offers heated air even if you set the controller to 18 degree.

TV fell down as 3 out of 4 screws were losen. The hotel maintenance team should have run throughout checks every 3 months to avoid this from happening. My partner tried to rescue the poor TV from crashing to the floor which hurt his shoulder at the end. He went back from breakfast and found the urgent situation and ended up holding the TV for over 10 mins trying to reach out to the phone in order to notify me to ask for help. I had yet finished my breakfast and was still in the hotel restaurant.

Even it is a smoke free hotel, I smelt smoke constantly during my stay. Frankly saying, the hotel should work on how to restrict the behaviour of the hotel guests and visitors. I travelled down in the lift to somewhere betweern lvl 22 to lvl 20 and saw a guest smoked in the corridor. It was dangerous to smoke inside the hotel except than the unpleasant odour.

I was very shocked by some of the very disgraceful hotel guests who obviously tried to brag extremely loudly in Mandarin in the restaurants during brunch time about " women are all whes and marrige is just a prost**n." It was unbearable and uncomfortable to hear that. It was shame that the hotel staff had not even tried to warn the guests and correct this behavior.As restaurant is a public area, it is inappropriate to spread these opinions especially there were kids dinning in the restaurant at the time.

Generally speaking it is value to stay as the...