Andaz Xintiandi Shanghai - A concept by Hyatt — Hotel in Shanghai

No deposit was required at check-in, but I was asked to swipe my card at checkout. I believe this is quite unusual.||2. Globalists are entitled to a 4 PM checkout, yet someone knocked on my door around 1 PM to ask if I needed housekeeping. Why do I need it when I am about to leave? It felt like they were rushing me to leave.||3. The air conditioning doesn’t work above 26ºC. No matter how I adjust the temperature, it always stays around 22ºC-23ºC. I initially thought it was my problem, like my body feels cold, but the next day at the Park Hyatt Shanghai, setting it to 27ºC felt completely different.||4. Very long check-in time. I remember arriving around 3 PM or several minutes before 3PM, and after a long wait, they still told me no rooms were available.||5. The room's locker pad was broken and fell to the ground. I had to fix it myself to open the door.||6. There are two doors for the hotel lobby, and at the one I entered, there were no staff present at all, let alone to help me with my luggage. That is probably not the usual door for the car because I walked to Andaz from The Langham. No one guided me to the check in desk. ||7. Since the check-in desk is a little bit unusual, I came there and wasn’t sure if that was the check-in desk, so I stood with my luggage, looking at them, expecting someone to help me. No one came to help me at all. Then I went to the desk to ask a staff member. They said this is the check-in desk and began my check-in process. The process was unusually long, as I mentioned. I was very tired, but I had to stand there with all my luggage, waiting. ||8. After the check-in, there was no room available. Then I asked the staff where the club lounge is. They didn't answer my question at all but only said that I could wait here (on the first floor). Later, I realized that maybe the first floor is the club lounge? I'm not sure.||9. The TV is on the side of the bed. What kind of layout is that? How are people supposed to watch it? There isn't even a chair facing the TV.||10. The room upgrade. I did make a mistake saying that I am on the lowest floor. Sorry again about this. They did upgrade the room, but this upgrade is still the worst possible from my perspective. The room is basically the same, with the only difference being that it’s at the corner and has 70 sqft more space. Considering it faces a building under construction with a bad TV location, it is probably even worse than the cheapest room. I don’t know how this can be called an upgrade.||11. The curtains were very poor quality. When raised, they were slow, noisy, and lacked texture, like a wall enclosing the room.||12. There is no minibar. OK, actually there is a minibar, but it only has one pack of seaweed and two pieces of chocolate.||13. The welcome fruit was very poor, with no snacks or other items—just a few scattered low-quality fruits. I’m shocked that this is the welcome gift for Globalists. It's much worse than the welcome fruit given to the every basic guest (with no premier status at all) at Langham, Park Hyatt, or Edition.||14. The bathroom decor is very strange, with ugly lighting, not to mention the spiders and flying insects in it as soon as I enter (see attached photo, the pink is from the ugly light of the bathtub). ||15. I asked for a toothbrush. I'm fine with the robot delivery, but the delivery time was very very long.||16. There is a small shop in the lobby selling all kinds of cookies. I planned to buy some, but there were no staff there at all, even though I stood there for minutes. Nobody came to ask me, so I didn't buy them in the end because it felt so weird to ask a staff member from far away just to buy a cookie.||17. There was no elevator service. I don't need elevator service and don't think it's absolutely necessary, but the hotel actually has two elevators. One is like a sightseeing elevator and doesn't actually lead to the guest rooms, while the one across from it is the guest room elevator. However, there is no one nearby to explain this.||18. After my feedback, the hotel team says "Construction is under way near the hotel, but so far, no other guests have had any feedback about the noise." This is a blatant lie. I looked at other feedback and found countless negative reviews about the noise. As evidence, I have attached a top review from China's No.1 OTA. I also found that air conditioning issues and being rushed to check out are very common in the feedback, and they don’t only happen to me.||I also stayed at The Langham nearby, which is a far better hotel than Andaz Xintiandi. I have stayed at over 15 different hotels in Shanghai, and so far, Andaz Xintiandi is the worst hotel I’ve ever experienced...

What a lovely stay we had! Some of the reviews of this property that I’ve read are way too harsh. Yes, it shows its age a bit but not in a way that would be too severe (maybe with the exception of the pool- I’ll get to that later). What we loved about the property the most is that it’s well and truly an Andaz. Cool artwork in the public areas, upbeat music in the lobby area and overall a slightly younger and more fashionable crowd than what you’d find in your run of the mill quiet-piano-music beige toned carpets 5 Star hotel (try the Langham next door which oozes beige from afar). This was the perfect match for the Xintiandi neighbourhood which is very posh and stylish with plenty of overpriced fashion shops. Overall Check in was efficient and English well spoken enough though our check in lady had the worst BO I’ve ever encountered with any hotel staff, but there seems to be a severe lack of deo spray in China generally we’ve noticed.

We had applied a Globalist suit upgrade award and found it very well spent during our 5 night stay here. Yes, there are a few scuff marks on the floor boards but hey, nice wooden floor boards throughout which I’d always prefer over a rotten carpet. The bed was typical Andaz and so comfortable that we did never want to get up. Speaking of “typical Andaz”- I loved that this is one of the older Andaz properties that’s located in a fancy and cool area of town, has lots of cool artwork everywhere and is a bit understated in its luxury. It reminded me a lot of the Andaz in West Hollywood or London Liverpool Street which are both amongst my favourite hotels in the world. The newer Andaz properties, while still nice, tend to be a bit over-the-top luxury which is a bit more exchangeable in my views.

So, yes, very happy with this property, loved the cool colour lit bathroom (bedroom lights also colourful) with the open plan rain shower, the spacious separate work room and a very bizarre seperate corner of the room with an exercise bike within (!) which didn’t love so much as it’s a totally unnecessary gimmick and worst, the video screen of the bike runs 24/7 and adds some unwelcome light to the room at night. We noticed that you can’t even switch it off or at least pull the plug as the matter is somehow connected underneath the floor boards and can’t be reached- annoying! We also the Andaz-typical free minibar plus evening happy hour in the lobby bar which was a nice added benefit.

The location of the property is full of overpriced fashion and jewellery shops which itself is a bit boring but it seems to be the cool part of town and well connected with several metro lines.

Biggest highlight must have been the breakfast buffet- such a huge choice and especially the local dishes were of amazingly high quality. You could get a whole selection of different noodle dishes, very tasty pan fried dumplings and all sorts of other things. Western selection included Eggs Benedict, omelette and even a carving station with baked ham. Both variety and quality was outstanding and staff very helpful and efficient- no problem if you don’t speak Mandarin, even some of the chefs spoke English!

And the biggest gripe- that would be the swimming pool. It feels old and not very hygienic: There was a government-issued pool hygiene sign by the wall indicating this pool is only tested as “Average” and it felt like that- the pool is essentially an infinity pool that constantly overflows but instead of flowing into some pretty pebbles or into a gutter, the water just sips onto the mouldy mats all around it. Yikes. We were also hassled into wearing an uncomfortable and annoying swimming cap even though I hardly have any hair and my partner wears hair really short. This has happened elsewhere in China too but we felt that generally, Chinese do not treat pools as a relaxing past time, rather as a sports venue of sorts. Very sterile, usually some tiger parents shouting at their kids to teach them swimming and that’s about it. Definitely not a place where one would want to relax and enjoy themselves which is...

The front check-in lady was super rude and aggressive. Due to the status of my hotel package, I can get a free room upgrade upon arrival “if available.” If they said “there’s none available” that would’ve been fine. But this lady lied straight to my face and said “we don’t have that type of package.” I pulled it up on my phone to show them that I had the package. She then shifted the lie to “we already upgraded to a suite for you.” That’s bs because I booked the suite. I just wanted to see if there’s any available upgrade because it’s part of the package. It doesn’t hurt to ask. But I was wrong… this person found every way to annoy me. After I showed her that paid for the suite and booked it myself with no upgrades, she lies again! She claims that I booked a regular room?!?!? I would know what I paid for, my wallet knows too!!! Up until the very end, she says “the room you have is already the highest level and can’t be upgraded.” Maybe start with that next time instead of making weird and poor excuses that weren’t even true???

That was just the check-in. When I got to my room, there were so many issues. First off, the bathroom design. The shower space is not contained, so you’ll feel the cool breeze as you shower. Plus the water went cold pretty quickly, making it very unpleasant! All the other hotels I stayed at had some door for the shower to isolate the heat and prevent a draft of cold air from ruining your shower. This was my first time experiencing such a terrible shower in any luxury hotel. I didn’t even think this was a possibility.

If you want to sleep, the vents are oriented in such a way that it blasts air straight towards your face. It dried out my noise and made sleeping very uncomfortable. The working desk was the same except you have a constant breeze blasting behind your head. I had to turn down the fan speed to low to make it bearable.

The slippers they provided were very odd and uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel like any slipper I’ve ever worn before.

The light control system is an absolute nightmare. It’s at times unresponsive, and when you want a specific light to turn off, the labels are not specific and you just have to play around with them to understand what button does what.

If you want to have a real luxury experience without the risk of getting annoyed by the staff’s terrible attitude and without a terrible bathroom experience, I recommend the Ritz Carlton Pudong. Price point is about the same, with a better view, convenient metro station and amazing staff. They were able to accommodate me for everything, and they were exceptionally nice. They made me feel welcomed and treated me like a real guest of honor. They even offered a discount for the breakfast buffet when we wanted to invite a friend from outside the hotel. Unlike Andaz, they were trying to charge us for more if we wanted to use our $100 credit from our package. It was supposed to be about 170RMB but then they suddenly said that’s if we pay out of pocket. It’ll be around 280RMB if we use our credit!?!? Doesn’t make any sense. Sounds like a scam and they just don’t want us to have breakfast for free for multiple days using our credits from our package.

Tl;dr: rude and gaslighting staff, cold shower, terrible experience 1/10 never coming back again I’m disappointed in Andaz Shanghai and I recommend my fellow foreigners to stay at the Ritz Carlton instead. It’s just better in every way. (Also the walk from the train station Line 1 to the hotel was terrible. Small road leading up to the hotel with markers on the floor for blind people, making the luggage haul experience...