Sheraton Huizhou Beach Resort — Hotel in Huizhou

(background: European but communicate fluently with staff in Chinese)The Sheraton welcomed us with a light-flooded lobby in traditional Asian architecture. A warm and relaxing impression.Location：The Sheraton is located between Xunliaowan (10min) and Shuangyuewan (30min), the two major tourist places on the peninsula. The hotel is located remotely, meaning no restaurants or supermarkets are close or outside the entrance. It shares the beach only with the Regal Resort, which is 1km down the beach. Therefore, its quiet and perfect for weekend-getaway from the busy city life.Facilities:The hotel offers 3-4 outdoor pools and 1 indoor pool, some remain closed/not in-use (hard to tell).Food:The hotel has a lobby bar which offers drinks and small snacks. We ordered a coffee there to be served at the pool, which was challenging and took some effort, but finally possible. (Chinese speaker)The breakfast restaurant is located on groundfloor serving up to 10:30am. Apart from common Chinese dishes, I am interested in the continental food variety, here the hotel was offering very soft "french style" baguette, 3 different types of cheese, and smoked duck breast as cold cut. Also, the hotel offered fresh salad buffet with a good variety including olives. For a 5 star hotel, I would expect fresh orange/fruit juice, which I could not find.The hotel offers a BBQ restaurant/bar at the waterfront, so we tried Shaokao around 7pm. we chose a 298Y package for 2ppl. The food quality was very poor and we had to return all sausages and ask 4 dishes to be put back on the BBQ. Any street BBQ tastes way better. First we were told all drinks are included, later a can of beer cost CNY40, So we had to pay additional CNY120. Disappointing experience for a 5 star hotel.Service:Concierge welcomed our taxi and opened the door, but did not offered any help for our luggage. Check-In took almost 20minutes (excluding waiting time) which is long for a 5 star hotel. We were told to go to the room, however, there wasn't clear signage where to find the right elevator to our room.Being at the pool, we tried to order drinks, as the hotel lobby is 10min away. It seems this customer wish is new to the hotel and we had to beg the hotel staff to find a solution for us. For a 5star hotel, I do expect being able to order/buy drinks/water at the pool area.The sunbeds at the pool needed cushions which are quite heavy and were located in a hidden area. (Hard to find for guests, so most guest just used their room towels on the hard benches). I would have wish that there is staff guiding/helping on that task.The F&B staff seems not well trained and supervised. Unfinished drinks have been thrown on the ground in the outdoor areas, food waste has been put in little plastic bags and clients tissues were used to clean tables and get them ready for next customers.We had to ask staff proactively to clean our table of used...

We come as two families, with 2 todellers. We originally expect this seaside resort should have wonderful private beach, warm pool and good food as other Shareton.

The reception staff is very freindly and helped to fullfilled my requirements as much as possible. -- also very thoughtful followup on my requests, even by using private cell phones.

However, there are two catastrophic experiences for the hotel that doing real damage to the trip, and here I have to share, so SPG can really do something to fix it.

The beach, is really small, and not maintained. It's a part of a long beach line, on which, construction sides are along the beach, next to the hotel. The worst point is, the private beach is so mall (max 300 meters long) was so crowded, there are only 10 beach chairs, while in the winter day, at least 50 guests at the beach. The sand and water quality is real dirty, with oil sting from the fishing boats. (not really ideal for swimming) --- It is so over croweded and spotted with rubbish that even outside of the hotel area, the beach next to the hotel (now is for a construction site) is with better quality.

The Food is suprisingly, unatrually, unbelievablely disgusting. We had been to several Sheratons already, which always enjoying the food quality. In this hotel, we tried 3 places for food, literally non of them serve qualified food that could reach common standard. The western/South east ASIA style fusion restaruant. We had Vietnam beef rice noodle ( it is not raw beef, but canned beef, and not at all Vietnamese) Chinese dish "Bao Zai Fan" was not cooked directly from raw rice, but just mixed cooked rice with meat, which was not how it should be cooked!

Bar in the lobby, we had 2 peices of Strawberry and Chocolcate mousse cake, which the cream/mousse was so sticky, taste rather like gummy bear than cream/mousse.

Before we go, we had breakfast. I wonder why the staff in restaurant challenge our 2 toddler ( 3 year old）need to pay extra. As our room is with breakfast pakage for 4 adults, we come with 3 adults and 2 toddler. Which toddler 3 years old are free of charge in any hotels I stayed before. --They let us in, like the 2 toddler took 1 adult breakfast share...(OMG) Let alone the food quality. --- Any cooked food, feel free to skip. Any food directly from the shelf that can ensure taste normal.

I higly suggest Sheraton to do some investigation/research to this hotels' food quality. Otherwise, with this food service, it is really hard for anyone eat in the hotel to have...

it worths my time writing a review as this should be the worst 5 star experience i ever had. not to the staffs thou as they are generally polite. ||firstly a big disappointment about the beach. very nice photo in the website but when u arrived that is totally different. attached here u can compare the (real vs website). ||although the decor was old and furniture is deteriorated, the sea view room is still nice with a balcony. so i wanted to grab a drink to enjoy, and then learnt that minibar is empty in this so-called 5 star resort . called and they said they can deliver red wine by glass. so i decided to call after shower. after shower i called, the other guy said the contrary that they don’t offer by glass, but have to order whole bottle instead (!). is this a joke? cant complete a whole bottle on my own, so i gave up and ordered beer. i wanted draft-beer - they don’t have it. i wanted Heineken by can - sorry out of stock (5 star hotel has Heineken out of stock!). ended up ordered a pricy can of Carlsberg at RMB 58. hopping it was a normal imported one, but ended up a chinese local one at alcohol 3% only. ||as a personal issue i can only sleep with harder mattress. this is expected from a 5 star hotel to offer such option. but i was told they don’t have it. all they can do is only to put a wooden board on a mattress. to compensate they upgraded me to this sea-view room. yes that made me feel better but that doesn’t solve my problem as i couldn’t sleep well whole night ( so i have lot of time to write this review now). and this is not expected from a five star. ||last but not least personally i m Sheraton platinum member. but i was told i cant enjoy member benefit (e.g. lounge access) as the reservation was made via an agent at a discounted price. so i feel being a platinum member they are not rewarding my loyalty. if this is the policy thats fine, but if i can, i don’t want to stay with Sheraton again. very...