荣民国际饭店 — Hotel in Xi'an

We used this hotel as our base for a 3 day visit to Xi'An. The hotel is nicely appointed and very clean. We stayed on the 8th floor which is their non-smoking floor. There was no smell of smoke in our room. The room size was good and the two queen sized beds were comfortable. The light switches and controls are many and confusing. They do have a description in english, but their meaning is obscure and we figured out what they controlled by trial and error. The bathroom is new and very clean. It has a shower stall and care has to be taken to direct the shower head down so as not to have water all over the bathroom floor. There is a curious trend in bathrooms in China, there is a full-size window with a screen that can be raised and lowered so that others in the room can see directly into the whole bathroom. I am not sure why they build in the ability to see into the room or bathroom. Needless to say our screen stayed down all the time!||||Breakfast was included with our room. The choices were geared toward the Chinese guests, the quality of the food was decent. The tables are all 12-seat round tables, the table cloths and place mats were not changed, some were stained.||Few staff spoke english, simple words and sign language (pointing at what we wanted) worked.||||The streets are filled with lots of fun things to see especially the night market in the Muslim Quarter. We walked to the city wall from the hotel and found that to be great experience. The Drum and Bell Towers are lit up beautifully at night -- they are also close to the hotel.||||We did make an overnight trip to the Huasan mountain. The hotel was willing to keep our luggage so that we did not have to lug them around. We were resuming our stay at the hotel after...

There is nothing wrong in this hotel - which already means a lot for a Chinese-style hotel. However, there is nothing outstanding either. Does this somehow make me rate the hotel down? No, definitely not! I paid a fare rate for it, and got delivered all I expected.||||Breakfast was very good, attentive staff, highly surprising good choice of different foods, definitely 5.||||Rooms are good, nothing great, but nice shower, nice bed, just the few on a construction side is really nothing to write home about. Will eventually change.||||Besides that, checkin/checkout was efficent, the hotels location is really good, right in the center of the city, 5 minutes to walk from the airport express drop off bus, opposite the muslim quarter, within 5 or 10 minutes of the clubbing area (which is surprisingly good for a not so big Chinese city! Go there if you like that kind of activity) really couldn't be much better.||||So, all in all, I am giving the hotel 5 out of 5 - it could also be 4 out of 5, but I feel the hotel is putting a lot of effort into it's work. Not a real 5 top hotel, but definitely a very good place to stay in downtown Xi'an. Next time in Xi'an will definitely check on this...

The Rongmin was our first hotel in China, so we had no idea what to expect! We were happy to find that the Rongmin was very clean and provided a pretty luxurious stay for our first 3 nights in the country. The staff was difficult to communicate with at first and spoke very little English, however, we were eventually able to communicate what we needed with them and use our guidebooks to help translate what we couldn't say. The hotel does not exchange money at the desk, so we had to go to the Bank of China, which is a few doors down from the hotel, and there were tellers there that spoke very good English that were able to help us with our currency exchange. The location is also great - very close to what they call "Disco Square," so you can't really get lost (lots of bright lights all the time) and very close to the street markets that are always crowded with visitors and residents alike. We included the breakfast buffet at the hotel and the food was very good. The bed was a little hard, but not uncomfortable to either of us. All in all, would highly recommend the Rongmin and would stay there again if we make it back to Xi'an in...