Sun Island Garden Hotel — Hotel in Harbin

I stayed here, in room 3037, for 3 nights. The room was fantastic – comprising a large lounge and large bedroom, with a bathroom. The bathroom included a bath, spacious shower and WC. There was another WC off the lounge. I was a guest of the Chinese so they had booked this for me and got me checked into the hotel. They were excited about seeing the room themselves because they knew it was so big! The hotel itself was very large with spacious conference facilities.||||There was a large TV in the lounge and bedroom. The lounge comprised a sofa, two easy chairs and a computer chair with desk. A kettle was provided with two sachets of Nescafe, no tea and four mugs! I was surprised there was no safe in the room.||The bed was large and very comfortable. Two water bottles were provided in the bathroom and 6 in the lounge, all free.||||The shower was spacious with overhead or handheld spray options. However, despite using the shower at different times of day, night and morning, the water was never hot. Even if it ran for a long time. Toiletries comprised conditioner, body lotion, shampoo and soap.||||I did not eat breakfast in the hotel but ate buffet lunch and dinner, both of which were good and varied. Plenty to choose from though of course Chinese.||The hotel is located well away from Harbin city centre and taxis do not like to go there because they can usually get a fare one way only. The hotel can provide details of taxis who are happy to go there. One night, in Harbin, wanting to return to the hotel, we were refused twice by taxis. Eventually we persuaded one to take us by offering more money.||||Wifi was good, no problems and I heard little noise from adjacent rooms.||||I encountered two people in the hotel who spoke English, one was a man who was very helpful and was usually around the reception area. The second person was a waitress who helped me translate the buffet choices.||||It was a comfortable hotel but a little away from the main area of Harbin. However, it is very close to the Sun Island complex. Whether it suits you depends on what you want. I enjoyed it because of the...

This beautiful hotel, reminded us of a French palace. The rooms are lovely, the lobby and dining room are spectacular. It is the closest hotel to Harbin Ice and Snow World. We easily walked there. ||||During our stay, we met "Ben" Jiang, the Food and Beverage Manager. Actually Ben went out of his way to make sure we knew where and what everything was in the dining room, the hotel and in the city. He insisted on giving us his phone number in case he could help us in any way during our stay. On our final evening, Ben arranged a special dinner for us, and promised to organise our taxi to the airport the following morning. When that time came, Ben was there at 6:30AM (even though he normally starts work at 10:30) just to make sure everything went well. As we were leaving the restaurant, he presented us with a lovely gift. This is the kind of service that makes wonderful memories, and we were very touched by this attentive, fantastic kindness. Ask yourself when you last had such a wonderful experience at a hotel. ||||Although we would agree with other reviews that it might be a bit difficult for guests who do not speak Mandarin, this is also the case virtually everywhere in Harbin, where we noted there are not a lot of Western tourists. ||||Not as criticism, but purely as suggestions to help the Sun Island Garden Hotel better cater to its Western guests, we offer the following suggestions:||||1) Include one English-speaking person on the front desk for each shift.||||2) Include an English translation on all hotel signs.||||3) Offer an English version of the menus in the dining room.||||4) Provide a free shuttle to and from Central Street in the downtown area. The shuttle could run every 2 hours unless there is a higher demand. The shuttle could also run to the other theme parks in a loop. This would be very convenient.||||5) Offer food and alcohol in the second floor lounge.||||With these changes, this hotel would be unbeatable value and truly a...

The hotel is long way from the city with nothing around it apart from being relatively closer to the Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. It looked tired. We made request for a room on a higher floor in the booking and response was received with "ok", however, the staff gave us a room on the ground floor, when questioned, the first answer given was "rooms with big bed are only on the ground floor", I asked him to check the notes on our booking, he then gave us a room (with a big bed) on the 2nd floor, and it happened to be approx. 200 metres walk from the lobby and the restaurant for breakfast. Breakfast supposed finish at 9:30am, we were there at about 9am, all the food were lukewarm and the food warmers were all turned down including the hotplate, soon majority of the food were cold and it took a long time to have a sunny side up awkwardly cooked, when asked why everything was turned down and the answer was: "we will pack up soon". It took a lot of time and effort to get some...