Zhejiang Narada Grand Hotel — Hotel in Hangzhou City

Looking at the photos of the exterior online, I was a little worried about booking 4 nights with my wife and young son as it looks quite dated and brash (reminded me of 1970s Birmingham, England for some reason) and we deliberated for days about it. Finally we took the decision as Chinese New Year was approaching very fast and we could not have been more pleasantly surprised. Once you walk in, the decor is beautifully done, the atmosphere is calm and spacious and the staff are super helpful with many speaking very good English. The are plenty of lifts so you are not waiting long and the rooms are very tastefully done. The smaller rooms are a little pokey and I had actually booked a larger room so when I told reception they immediately upgraded us to a fantastic room on one of the top floors, where we didn't want to leave for at least 36 hours - these rooms have really nice touches like L'occitaine bath products, huge TVs, idocks and Japanese electronic toilets that do everything except sing (although there is probably a button for that). The cleaning ladies are extremely nice too and went out of their way to do things for us even though they didn't speak English or us much Chinese. The gym, pool and saunas are great (i think the men's might have more facilities such as hot bath and jacuzzi) although you have to walk quite far (inside) to get to them. The only improvements I could suggest is to make an easier access to the gym area (a lift might help) and make the food a bit tastier - a little bland although good enough! Really...

Looking at the photos of the exterior online, I was a little worried about booking 4 nights with my wife and young son as it looks quite dated and brash (reminded me of 1970s Birmingham, England for some reason) and we deliberated for days about it. Finally we took the decision as Chinese New Year was approaching very fast and we could not have been more pleasantly surprised. Once you walk in, the decor is beautifully done, the atmosphere is calm and spacious and the staff are super helpful with many speaking very good English. The are plenty of lifts so you are not waiting long and the rooms are very tastefully done. The smaller rooms are a little pokey and I had actually booked a larger room so when I told reception they immediately upgraded us to a fantastic room on one of the top floors, where we didn't want to leave for at least 36 hours - these rooms have really nice touches like L'occitaine bath products, huge TVs, idocks and Japanese electronic toilets that do everything except sing (although there is probably a button for that). The cleaning ladies are extremely nice too and went out of their way to do things for us even though they didn't speak English or us much Chinese. The gym, pool and saunas are great (i think the men's might have more facilities such as hot bath and jacuzzi) although you have to walk quite far (inside) to get to them. The only improvements I could suggest is to make an easier access to the gym area (a lift might help) and make the food a bit tastier - a little bland although good enough! Really...

After two long flights, I was happy to see that this hotel has a spa. Turns out that the spa cannot accept non-local credit cards. They called up to the reception to see if they can charge to the room. The reception said no because my room was paid for by my host. They suggested that I go upstairs and withdraw some money at the ATM. Upstairs, it turns out that there is no ATM. I go up to the reception and ask them if they can take my credit card for incidentals and let me charge to the room. The woman at the counter makes a face and hands me over to a man. The man calls the spa, talks to someone at the back office, and tells me I can come back up to the reception after the massage and pay with my credit card. Knowing that the spa staff will not understand if I tell them this in English, I ask him to call the spa and explain. He makes a call assures me that everything is fine. I go downstairs and the spa staff say they have not heard anything. I ask them to call the reception. They call and say, "no". At this point, I got fed up even more stressed than before, and left.||I've traveled around the world and stayed in more hotels than I can remember. This is by far the worst front desk experience. Front desk people at 5-star hotels proactively find solutions to the customer's problem. Here, they not only are unhelpful, making me run around wasting time, but go far enough to make me feel unwelcome.||The only reason I don't give a 1-star is that the room is very nice and spacious and the dinner was good (not...