Sheraton Guilin Hotel — Hotel in Guilin

I stayed with my wife in the Sheraton Guilin hotel for four days as Guilin is the place for our honey moon many years ago. Although we had unpleasant stay experience in this hotel, I would say that the hotel is value for money overall. Sheraton Guilin hotel is situated in front of the Li River and is not too far away from the city centre. It thus offers hotel guests both a peaceful environment and convenience. You can reach shopping area, including a very large food street with hundreds of attractive food stalls and restaurants, by two to three minutes' walk. The hotel is well decorated. We stayed at the club floor facing the Li River. The room was comparatively small in China standard (but still better than many European hotels) and room amenities were good except that there was only one electric power socket for Hong Kong appliances.

The hotel had a very good Italian restaurant at 7th floor that provided delicious food and excellent services at reasonable prices. Hotel services were generally very good. Most hotel staff were very friendly, polite and helpful. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement if the hotel wishes to become a top one in Guilin.

As a SPG gold member, I had set my non-smoking preference in my member profile. However, we were offered a room at fifth floor that we later found that it was a smoking one. As a result, my wife could not sleep the whole night. In the next morning, we requested to change our room. Only at this time, the duty manager admitted that only rooms of no. 41 onwards (our room number was smaller than 41) were non-smoking rooms!

At time of check-in, we also asked the duty manager whether there was any club room at sixth floor but were told that no club room was available at the sixth floor as only suites were provided at this floor. However, when we asked for changing the room, we were offered club rooms at sixth floor! The living room area of first replacement club room offered to us appearing fine. We were then shocked when finding that the floor of the bathroom was flooded with water due to blocked drainage. We really wondered how could the hotel offer a damaged room to the hotel guest.

Room description was also inaccurate. According to the description of a club room, guest can enjoy breakfast at the club lounge. However, the club lounge only opened in the afternoon and we thus had to take our buffet breakfast in the hotel’s main restaurant at the second floor. Frankly speaking, most restaurant staff were very friendly and helpful though both their efficiency and English standard need improvement. Food variety was good but the food quality needed improvement. When having buffet breakfast in a hotel, I usually eat some breads. However, I refrained from eating breads in Sheraton hotel as they were obviously made of low grade flour. The above was not the worst of all. I had the most undesirable experience inside the hotel when ordering frying egg white in two days. In the first day, I asked a chef in the egg stall to fry egg white for me. About ten minutes later, I came back to the egg stall to collect my food but found that this chef forgot to cook for me. I then asked him to do it for me but he, instead of trying to rectify his mistake immediately, asked his colleague to fry the egg white me. At the same time, he started making egg white omelet and took it back to the kitchen at the back for enjoyment! I therefore had to wait for the frying egg white in front of the egg staff for over five minutes.

In another day, the experience was even terrible. This time, I asked another chef to fry egg white for me. He started frying but stopped the process so as to make omelet for a foreign lady who came afterwards. I therefore had to wait for about five minutes before he resumed cooking my food. However, I was astonished that the chef used his finger by the side of the hole, touching egg white draining out from the egg. How...

There are not many choices of 5* hotels in Guilin. I shortlisted Sheraton and Shangrila at the beginning. As I have been a SPG member for years plus the good location of Sheraton Guilin, I chose Sheraton as the hotel of my family trip in the end.

Unfortunately, Sheraton Guilin failed me and my family utterly this time. Firstly, the room is stale and small. The pillows are stiff and uncomfortable, yet no other choices to offer. The TV is probably just 32" with very limited choices of channels. There's no BBC, or National Geographic, history channel or Disney. Most channels are state media or local channels. The toilet is quite big and well lay-out. But the faucet is not secured on the sink (it moves as I turn on the tap). And the toilet couldn't flush at one time (which I had called the service to fix). The electronic body weight scale lit up itself at the middle of the night, which was extremely irritating and eerie.

The hotkey (press to call the service) on the phone doesn't work. It takes me a while to figure out the right number is simply 0.

And the breakfast provides was just such a poor quality and lacked variety. It's the worst breakfast I never had in all the 5* hotels I have stayed. It's even worse than some of 3* hotels. There's no cheese, no french baguette, or proper ham. The coffee sucks, so does the Latte. There are only 2 or 3 types of fruits provided, which ran out like 9am. More than once, I had to signal the kitchen to add them.

It's not all about bad. There are some good points regarding to this hotel.

The service staff were friendly. The toiletry provided is quite good. We traveled with my 6 years old daughter. And the hotel provided kid's table/chair, tooth brush set and child size slippers.

The location is terrific, many attractions like Elephant hill, dual tower plus the shopping district within walking distance. We were spoiled with choices of food.

The Chinese restaurant in the hotel has very high standard and is probably the best Chinese...

Stayed at the Sheraton Guilin hotel for two nights during QuingMing Festival in April, so peak time for holidays in China. We arrived late at night and went straight to reception. The night clerk did not welcome us. I provided him with my passport and explained that the room was in my name. He replied in correct English and after that decided to ignore me and speak in Mandarin with my friend, explaining everything to him which I found very unprofessional and rude. The credit card machine wasn’t working (out of battery) and then it was out of paper. We were finally given the key to the room, but no indication how to get there (not that difficult anyway). When we get into the room we called reception to check on some items we wanted (extra pillows, some toiletries). It took us several minutes until someone replied our call, just to be told that they were unable to provide us with anything we requested (again, in Chinese even though I was speaking in English). No apologies received. The carpet in the room was stained, but the beds were very comfortable, although the air con machine made lots of noise and the temperature in the room did not properly regulate (we mentioned it to the reception person the next day, but nothing was done). Breakfast selection was very small and the staff was not attentive at all. Even though we were down for breakfast at 8am and the room was not busy there were lots of tables dirty and food was not replenished when finished. We were never offered coffee or any drinks at all.

During check out we encountered similar problems than during check in. No explanation whatsoever and the credit card machine still did not work, so they could not cancel the pre-authorisation for the whole stay. We were not offered help for a taxi or our suitcases, so just left the hotel and went to another place.

Very poor experience for a Sheraton hotel and definitely not worth the money. Several other hotels with similar location in town and offering better...