Fairfield by Marriott Harbin Downtown — Hotel in Harbin

To start, I was a Marriott Platinum member, so I know more than a little about these brands. I was visiting during the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival and had planned to stay 4 days - we stayed only 1. The staff were at least nice enough to cancel the reservation, but that's about all I can say. ||||1. 1 of our rooms had a strong mold smell in the bathroom; the other smelled of cigarette smoke. We mentioned this when we were discussing cancelling the reservation and the staff didn't even seem to care.||2. The rooms are not at the standard of other Fairfield hotels - beds are harder, floors are cheap vinyl, etc. Simply, everything is worse. It's rated 3 stars, but it struggles to reach that standard based on what I saw, still Marriott has the arrogance to charge 2x the market rate for what they offer.||3. The location is far from expectations. The area around the hotel is like a slum; there are barely restaurants or shops despite being near one of the train stations. We took a walk the night we arrived (around 8pm) and knew this place wasn't for us.||4. I want to stress that the photos online are NOT the actual hotel. This is FRAUD. Most of the room photos on Marriott even say "photo coming soon" - like they know the rooms are bad and dont want anyone to know. From the lobby photo - that isn't this hotel- but I saw it and thought it might be a nice place. The real lobby is a shady countryside restaurant crammed with boxes and a dimly lit breakfast area that would struggle to hold 10 people. ||||In summary, i do not recommend this hotel to anyone. If you are on a budget, you will find better value with a local Chinese brand hotel - and likely a better room. If you're using points, maybe free seems like a good bargain, but If you are on vacation, you will probably have a hard time enjoying yourself if you're booked...

Good points:||(1) There is a MRT station, Shangzhi street station, just 500m away from the hotel, make it really easy to every where.|(2) The reception are help full, especially Mr. Tom Liu.|(3) No convenient store around, but if you walk a bit there are still some you can find.|(4) Some street BBQ hawkers beside Shangzhi street MRT station, taste very nice. They only open after 8pm.||Bad points:||(1) No good restaurant around us, especially Cantonese style restaurant.|(2) Bed is a bit small to sleep 2 people, but still ok.|(3) The first night when we checked in, ask for direction, the reception did not show very friendly and just tell us to go outside and walk for 20 mins to Zhongyang street until Mr. Tom Liu came up tell us about the short distance MRT station.|| BEWARE: If you don't have Alipay or Wechat pay, please prepare a...

Titanium Elite. Difficult to choose between Fairfield (1.6k per night) and JW Marriott (1.8k per night) in terms of location. Price around the same but I would have gotten way better value at JW.

No upgrade as it was full occupancy.

Concierge can’t help with Ice Snow World tickets.

Breakfasts was not bad for the spread. They packed some basic food for us when we left at 5am.

They allow left luggage overnight if you check in later as we went to Mohe for few nights then come back here.

Got a nice door gift with local stuff. Was only interested in the magnet.

One train stop from the main square. Walking distance to Harbin station. But you generally won’t walk even if it’s near coz of the cold.

I don’t get the value or understand how a Fairfield hotel can cost this much. Perhaps it’s just...