Inner Mongolia Jinjiang Intl — Hotel in Hohhot City

I stayed in this hotel for one night recently during business travel. It is an excellent Chinese 5 star hotel, that was beautifully presented and serviced. The hotel featured a range of restaurants, gift shops, a travel agency, a bar and many other features. The check in experience was quick and efficient.||||I stayed on the 19th floor, and the room was excellent. The king bed was more comfortable than most Chinese hotels, and the room included a mini bar, office desk, separate bath and shower and everything was clean and in good condition. The room also included a PC, although I didn't use this. Welcome fruit and yogurt was provided in the room.||||A colleague and I had dinner in the first floor restaurant at the buffet. We selected to eat here as there were only 2 of us travelling together, and this allowed a better variety of food than if we ate at one of the other restaurants in the hotel. The buffet was excellent, including a range of popular local cuisines such as mutton, donkey and a variety of soups, as well as a range of fish (including sashimi) and seafood. The buffet included wine and beer in the affordable price. Breakfast was in the same restaurant, and included a range of Chinese and Western dishes, with attentive staff providing tea and coffee.||||The staff throughout were friendly and helpful.||||The downside (and the ONLY reason this hotel gets 4 rather than 5 stars in this review) - was checkout and the use of DCC (Dynamic Currency Conversion) with staff apparently oblivious that they were doing this. I clearly instructed the staff that the payment was to be processed to my Mastercard in Chinese RMB. They nodded and proceeded to present me with a credit card slip which had been converted by the Point of Sale (POS) machine into Australian Dollars using DCC (Dynamic Currency Conversion). I refused to sign it and asked them to void it and process it in in RMB. They voided it, and the processed the transaction through their machine again, which converted the charge into Australian Dollars again!!! I asked them again to void it and offered to show them how to process it in RMB in their machine. With my assistance, this (third) time it was correctly processed in RMB. ||||As a frequent traveller I will always avoid allowing merchants POS machines to convert currency automatically to my home currency as this always works out to a much poorer exchange rate than the current interbank rate. By way of example, the DCC AUD amount that they presented to me on the charge slip at this hotel was AUD $190.23, whereas once processed correctly to my credit card in RMB, the amount when converted by my bank in Australia was AUD $182.96. This reflects why I will ALWAYS decline DCC and insist that transactions be processed in local currency. It is a significant gap, which I would happily refer to as a scam when it is conducted involuntarily.||||I genuinely believe that the staff were not trying to rip me off with this DCC scam, however they were untrained about the fact their machine was converting currencies using DCC by default, and this is unacceptable for a 5 star hotel (indeed, I believe it is unacceptable for any merchant). The staff were friendly about this, however it did detract from the otherwise impeccable experience at this hotel.||||I would happily stay in this beautiful hotel again and would recommend it, but would recommend that foreign Visa and Mastercard holders exercise caution when transacting here,...

This hotel is in Hohhat, in Inner Mongolia China. It has a number of good things to mention but it is not a 5 star hotel due to a few deficiencies.|| ||First and foremost is the lack of smoke free rooms or any restrictions of smoking in the morning breakfast area. Most of the staff has a minimum understanding of English, but hey, it’s Inner Mongolia so some lack can be meted out.||||When checking in we asked for a smoke free room but upon arrival to our room, the sink of Chinese tobacco was overwhelming and we asked for another smoke free room. As it turned out, the hotel has one floor (16th) out of over 25 floors that is designated as smoke free so we got a room on that floor. Only is seems the Chinese are not bound to observe the smoke free requirement. Our new room only had a faint odor of second hand smoke evident when we first entered the room so we decided this was probably the best we could do. I have developed asthma late in life and therefore, but health depends on not being subjected to air pollution, difficult to avoid in China but a hotel room should be a safe haven. At least it had a window we could open and due to the weather in Inner Mongolia being mild during the summer, we kept the window open to somewhat negate the offensive odor.||||Breakfast offers a wide variety of food although the fruit juices were of poor quality probably by diluting them with water. But of course I speak from a Western point of view so I will not also mention that the bacon is always undercooked. My point is that although some food is not exactly to my liking, the variety offered is substantial and wide enough to eat there a few days without having to eat the same food day after day. One trick to try to avoid smokers is to choose a table away from a group of Chinese men who are the ones who smoke in restaurants.||The staff is quite friendly and they try to meet your needs. The room was kept clean and stocked. Due to outside activities, we were not able enjoy any of the other restaurants. We phoned down to find out if the hotel had a spa but were told they did not. But we discovered foot massages were available on the 5th floor. However, I was not impressed with the quality my wife and I received and the young women applying the messages seemed more interested in talking to each other.||||Overall, I believe the hotel was much more than adequate and problem with being around second hand smoke is probably beyond the responsibility of the hotel, given the culture aspects. We were not given a choice of hotels during out stay and were happy to get back to Shanghai and find a smoke free environment. Still, I think a four star rating is adequate for the Inner Mongolia Jin Jiang...

We spent two separate nights here during a trip to Inner Mongolia. The bed was very comfortable, and much more comfortable than most Chinese hotels both times. ||||Our first room had no issues. The second time around we were in room 6008 or 6009, and our room had a variety of problems. The air conditioning didn't work very well. The bathroom smelled very bad (common issue with drains in China, but should be taken care of in a hotel). The tiles surrounding the bath tub were falling off or completely of, the shower had a lot of staining, and the toilet ran after flushing. The light switches also didn't work very well and had to be pushed multiple times to turn lights on or off. ||||The breakfast buffet had a lot of Chinese and Mongolian options, and a few Western options (fried eggs, sausages, beans one morning, bread/pastries). The coffee was very mediocre. ||||We had drinks in the Lobby Lounge one evening, the service was good, but the prices were pretty high compared to the rest of the city - ~25rmb for a very small bottle of Tsingtao. There was great people watching. ||||There were a lot of large tour groups there, with lots of unruly children, so if you are looking for a quiet and relaxing stay, this might not be a good option.||||There also did not seem to be a lot to do within walking distance of the hotel. We went looking for a restaurant nearby on our first night there and had to settle for street BBQ as there were very few restaurants or shops within a few blocks of the hotel.||||Finally, upon check-in our first time, we had to let them keep our passports overnight. We've stayed in hotels all over China and we have never had to let them keep our passports for longer than 5-10 minutes to make a copy. We wasted at least 5 minutes talking back and forth with the check-in staff but they refused to let us pick them up or bring them to us until the morning. When we checked in the second time they wanted to keep them again, but our guide argued with them and reminded them they already had copies from our previous stay. We were very put off by the whole check-in process and a little concerned about what they did with our passports during the 12 hours they demanded to keep them. ||||Overall, an okay place to stay, but certainly not a 4 or 5 star hotel as advertised, and not very friendly to...