Citadines Xingqing Palace Xian — Hotel in Xi'an

The room was very comfortable, with a microwave, little fridge and dishes. The staff was very helpful, although some spoke better English than others. It is directly next to a large Vanguard supermarket. Above the supermarket is an excellent restaurant (5th floor?) that we ate at several times (True Love Fan Texi 真爱范特西). The restaurant is very posh, but reasonable prices, and they are very accommodating to English speakers. Tip--if you need to cross Xingqing Rd (the street the hotel is on), there is a bridge that runs from one side of the University to the other that keeps you out of traffic. This hotel is not a place to stay if you won't ride public buses and take the metro--we depended on the staff and our Google GPS Navigation app on our smartphone to know the bus schedules (you need to have a VPN on your smartphone to get to Google). It takes about 20 minutes by bus to get to the center of the city. We had trouble getting taxis to the hotel, so, if you find a taxi driver through the hotel or otherwise, WeChat with that person so that you can use him/her at other times. We found an excellent woman taxi driver that way, who didn't speak much English, but knew enough, and could get help from friends via her phone. There is also a traditional lamb/bread stew restaurant within a quarter mile, on Xianning W. Road. The hotel included a free breakfast buffet for half our days, as part of our booking.com booking. It is ample and has healthy American and Chinese options, if you choose carefully but gets...

Check-in was uneventful. As we made our way towards our room we realised pretty quick the hotel didn't quite look the way the pictures showed. Reality check - looks are deceiving. The room looked tired and the bathroom even worse. Just a short stay, we consoled ourselves. As we started to settle in we realised the room wasn't cooling. The air-con wasn't working! Upon requesting at the reception we were told that the air con on that floor was not working. We'll have to do without it! No room swap, no apology! We refused to take the room outright. We needed air con and for the price we paid, we surely did. We were given another room on another floor which thankfully had air con but the room was worse for wear. Not a happy night at all! ||Next day - new day, new start? Come breakfast... Chaos with coupons and entry. Out of frustration, our group of eight split up. Half of us, not bothered to create fuss, ate out while the other half ate at the hotel restaurant. I'm glad I opted to eat out and didn't have to ingest their terrible spread of food or face the ice cold staff there. I'm glad our stay there was a short one. Wouldn't have been able to endure the place for...

Really bad hotel, amazed it got so many good reviews.||||The room was dirty, the floor hasn't been cleaned in weeks, the toilet had urine at the back of the seat and the bedsheets had stains on. ||||The room was 24 degrees C when we got there it was so hot, the member of staff who showed us to the room put on the air con to cool the room. We went out and when we returned at 11.30 pm it was 27 degrees! I almost fainted when I walked in. Staff were so rude and unhelpful and I spoke to the manager who seemed to be worse. They said they don't have the air con on as it is winter, obviously Reception staff don't know this as we had 3of them in our room at one point for about 30 mins and then they said 'can we help you?' it was getting so late but in the end they agreed to bring us a small air con machine. ||||Breakfast was so bad, the only fruit was apples and not much selection at all. ||||Reception staff didn't tell us where breakfast was and when we found it we needed tickets and reception did t even give us any! So we had to collect some! Frustrating. ||||Location is bad. Metro is about 20 min walk and difficult to find. It is very far...