Regency Hotel — Hotel in Shantou

The rooms are of a high standard, but have not been redecorated since the place opened in '99 - they are exactly the same, hence the complaints of some reviewers here. But it is not poor condition like others are saying.||||What is of concern, is a lack of English staff on hand when you need them. There are a couple, but for a place with 500 rooms, two is too little by far.||||The food here was a complete joke. The steak was so bad, the most painful part was that I had to pay for it. How can you get a steak wrong? Want a beer with your meal? Oh you will wait for that. You will likely have your sub-standard food long before you taste that beer.||||The restaurant is typical of the mainland, one person on his phone talking to someone on the moon I expect, given the volume of conversation, another emptying the contents of both nostrils into the cloth, whilst another next to me needed a trough, rather than a plate to eat from. Guess I can't blame the hotel for this though.||||But what I can blame them for, is internet performance that is SO bad, that I wasn't able to effectively work during my stay. I did some digging and found they have a mere 100Mb/s link, for a 500 room hotel. What penny-pincher came up with that decision I wonder...||||Another downside I noticed, was that the wonderful 'Rocky Lounge' in the basement, which had live music, dancers, great bar etc, is now a parking lot. What. A. Shame. I guess they had no choice as the area around the hotel, which was once sparse when the place was built, is now metropolis. Indeed, the area is almost unrecognizable after so much time...||||So Regency - improve the quality of the food, and the internet, and...

Very pretty hotel lobby, acceptable rooms. Wifi only works in the bedrooms and lobby, will not even work in your bathroom. Unfriendly staff, you'll never feel less welcome at a hotel. Staff made my 6 year old cry while yelling at him and myself (along with several other people) about not wearing a swim cap in the pool despite no rule being posted about that anywhere. ||They promised us a bath tub. Have a look at what they delivered in the photo, lol. Hotel restaurant is mediocre at best and features a woman screaming into a Livestream for a full hour walking around your table at dinner. Cold eggs and stale leftovers for breakfast. They pretend to cater to overseas visitors, but nobody speaks English. We're usually greeted with a scowl.||In the words of my son, "we didn't pay a bunch of money to get yelled at like that." Staff here will make sure you feel like an intruder. But I found the beds...

When travelling in China, once you leave the major cities you can expect hotels to disappoint. Shantou is a place with very few foreign visitors so we were pleasantly surprised by the hotel. Believe me, I've been in some scary hotels in China and this one definitely won't be on my list of places to miss. The staff were helpful and spoke English. The room was clean even though the corridor (of our no smoking floor) smelt of cigarettes. We saw people smoking in the hotel but that's hard to avoid in China. The buffet breakfast is definitely worth skipping. For westerners it will be disappointing. Luckily there is a Starbucks just across the street. Just be careful crossing. Pedestrians have no priority either with or without a green light or on the pavement for that matter. Overall we were happy with our experience. If we ever need to return we'll go back to...