New Era Hotel — Hotel in Kunming

The Fairyland Express (Baida) goes by several additional names including New Era Hotel apartments and its Chinese name. It is attached/next to the New Era Hotel but it is not part of the hotel. Several reviews here clearly have mixed up the New Era Hotel with the New Era apartments. The rooms are serviced apartments rather than hotel rooms.||||Finding it:||You have a better chance of your taxi driver finding the New Era Hotel. Once you have found the New Era hotel, the Fairyland Express apartments are next door. The New Era hotel has two entrances: from a pedestrian only mall and another one diagonally behind the mall entrance on the block. If you are coming by taxi, you will most likely arrive at the second entrance, that is the street entrance. This is the entrance you want to find the Fairyland Express. Stand in front of the New Era hotel entrance facing the hotel. Turn right and follow the block around the corner for about 10 meters. You will be standing in front of the entrance of the New Era Hotel apartments aka. Fairyland Express. The front desk is set deep in the lobby near the lifts to the right. It doesn't look like much of a hotel.||||The good:||Big rooms with a view out on to the street. Big bathrooms with reasonable water pressure and hot water. Clean and basic toiletries provided. Our room had two main bedrooms with queen beds conjoined at the bathroom with minimal privacy for users of the bathroom. Very swinging.||||Cheap. Much cheaper than the hotel right next door. Bang smack in the center of Kunming with plenty of food, bars, malls, night markets and Starbucks within easy walking distance of the hotel.||||The staff are friendly and efficient but you will need some Mandarin to make requests and get information. There is 100 yuan deposit at check in. You can use international credit cards here but the staff might accidentally try to process your card as a Chinese credit card at first. You will know this has happened when they offer you the keypad to enter your PIN. Get them to process the transaction using your signature rather than the PIN.||||The bad:||No air con. The hotel claims this is because it participates in Kunming's Green City initiatives. Based on the other reviewers here, this is clearly croc and a conveniently made up excuse for an air con system that has long stopped working. Ironically, you need to run the hot water for about 5 minutes to come through, thereby, in terms of environmental impact, offsetting carbon output minimization saved through the no air con policy with pure water wastage. Swings and roundabouts...||||The ugly:||It's noisy at night, even up 17 floors. The noise comes from the street mall below. Music and signing and general revelry mixed in with a bit of traffic. I doubt the New Era Hotel next door is much better for noise pollution levels so this is what you get for a central city stay.||||There is strange petroleum product smell permeating the lift well. I think it is the lube they have used on the lift cables. Don't be put off: the smell doesn't reach the rooms.||||Overall:||For a couple of nights stay in the center of town, this perfectly adequate clean accommodation. You won't get any of the services you get with a proper hotel but neither will you pay for it either. I would happily stay here again if I came to Kunming for the central location and save my RMB even more happily for...

I can't believe this place can receive all those rave reviews, which I'd based to book my stay at the end of March! The only redemption of this place is its location and the friendly cleaning lady we had on our floor.||The lobby is a small messy room with no waiting area. Not even the hotel name was displayed anywhere, I had to ask the front desk to be certain I was at the right place. Construction materials were piled all over the place. The hallways smelled of chemicals and paints. There was only one working elevator for the entire hotel. Understandably, it was always crowded, stopped by many floors on each round, and took forever for us to get to our room or to exit the hotel.||When I checked in, the staff asked for an extra 300rmb as deposit. I booked for two days, both days' room charges and deposit were to pay up front, without a receipt. Next to me were a middle age couple, renting a room by the hour. Later in my room, I found a card advertized 80rmb/4hrs rate (see attached picture). Returning to our room in the evening, a young fashionable lady got off the elevator at the same floor. From the way she searched in the hallway, it was obvious she did not stay in the hotel but was merely there to look for someone. It was easy to guess her profession!||On the second day of my stay, my card key didn't work when I returned to my room in the early afternoon. A cleaning lady told me the hotel changes all key codes every noon. After spending 10 min to get down to the lobby, I was told my card was demagnetized due to my own fault. In fact, I placed the door card in my back pant pocket all the time, nowhere near any cell phone or devices that may cause demagnetization. When I was getting ready to return to my room after my card was updated, I observed a smirking smile on the face of an idled staff to the one who dealt with me, as if to say "Good lie!" ||The room we stayed had no fridge, bottled water, facial tissues, alarm clock or radio (basic amenities I would expect for the 300rmb/night I paid). The bathroom and toilet was a transparent unit partitioned by a haphazard wall. The toilet floor got wet when someone took a shower. The most amazing thing was a single piece of glass served as both shower and toilet door, therefore only either one can be closed (see attached picture).||The promised free WiFi never worked in our room. Fortunately I had paid and brought my own device to get online. ||If you really like the location, please consider paying a little more to stay at the New Era Hotel just next door. It looked much more presentable although I did not check out...

Location: 5/5 stars This hotel is close to mostly everything. Food, bank, shopping, massage, movie theatre, hospital. ||Hotel lobby: very dated and needs to upgrade to better interior.| Well the surrounding is kept clean though so OK||Hotel room: bed and room cleanliness is acceptable on international standard. However, the toilet is the area that needs lots of upgrade. The hardware of the toilet is borderline acceptable and the mildew on the wall of the bath tub is really an eyesore. I can see house keeping did clean the tub and the walls but the fact it is very dated that it is hard for them to remove the mildew stain. |One other thing I should mentioned here which the hotel website or any hotel booking website did not mentioned is that, this hotel’s central air-conditioning would only turn on when the outside temperature reached a certain degree. Simply put, if the hotel management feels it is not hot enough outside, then you have no air-con in your room. You can turn on the air-con but no “cold” air will be coming out. ||For those who are from the North and like to sleep in cooler temperature, too bad, can’t do it here in this hotel. ||Front desk people and concierge people are both average in customer service. ||Breakfast: choices of food is not too bad but mostly Chinese food. As you can see from my profile, I have been to many hotels and I think the breakfast here in New Era is acceptable for what I am paying. ||If you don’t like the breakfast here, you have plenty of choices outside the hotel from McDonald to Starbucks. ||Overall, I think this hotel is O.K. But really needs to upgrade the interior decor. ||Well, I speak English, Mandarin, Cantonese and French so I didn’t have any communication problem but I do believe most of these staff do not speak fluent English except for...