Holiday Inn Express Xi'An Bell Tower — Hotel in Xi'an

Hello, hereafter is my review about my stay at Holiday Inn Express bell tower.. Location : perfect location, cannot be closer to the Bell Tower, the airport bus stop (line G45 from Terminal 3 @25 RMB) and ZhongLou subway station. Price : i stayed for 2 nights at the end of chinese new year festival. The price for one night was at about 50€ including breakfast. I think the breakfast is included by default because nobody asked me my room number. Good deal for foreigners. The breakfast is at 90% a chinese buffet with eggs, sausages, noodles, fruits, tea, corn, potatoes, yogourts, ... Some basic pastries and sandwich bread are also available (butter and strawberry jam as well). Room : the hotel is very young. All the facilities are clean and new. TV, AC, water bottles, large window, swaps, toothbrush, toothpaste are provided. The bed is confortable as also the pillows. Service : only 2 or 3 people speak English so be ready to use a translator to be able to discuss or to ask questions. The team is available, polite, helpful and professional. My stay : i arrived in advance due to my morning flight. I mentioned it in the app that i will do an early check-in. At the check-in desk, it was not a problem. The small concern was to find someone from the team who speaks English :). My room was a non-smoking standard king sized room. Perfect for a short stay. I did my stuff outside and enjoyed the beautiful city of Xi'an. At the evening, i came back to sleep. As i said, this hotel is new but i was surprised by all the noises that i was able to hear : each room door opened or closed the TV from my neighbors the moves from the maid cleaning the other rooms each choc on a wall or on the floor because almost all of them are hollow To sum-up, the acoustic performance is really really poor. The top was at 10 pm : I discovered that a nightclub is stuck to the hotel (or the opposite). So, from 10 pm to early in the morning, i heard the bass. Not something low, but a very high bass level. I am used to sleeping with my bose earphones with noise canceling. They helped to reduce the noise level but not enough to sleep. So, at midnight, infuriated, i went down to the lobby to ask to change my room. I got a new room quickly without any problem. I guess the team knows this issue. At the same time, they had many phone calls and one customer also went down. I remind, it was at midnight! Btw, this new room was a little bit far from the previous one so the bass level was lower. But i was able to hear them without my earphones but not with. Yeah! Tip : rooms with uneven numbers are the worst because in front of the nightclub.

This last point is unacceptable. How is it possible to let customers sleep in front of a nightclub which produces a such high level of bass? It's not respectful, honest and professional. Holiday Inn belongs to IHG group. This hotel is far for promoting IHG values ( the highest quality of service, delivering True Hospitality for everyone). I would say, it's the opposite. So, if you wanted to stay at the hotel, you know what you will enjoy. But, definitely, i don't...

If I were to summarize it, this hotel is convenient but not comfortable. The only things it has going for it are the general location and breakfast. It's located in the heart of Xi'an right near the Bell and Drum Tower and Muslim Quarters so easy access to those places if you're interested in them. Also within easy walking distance of the south gate City Wall. Breakfast was surprisingly good in comparison to some of the other hotels we stayed at where breakfast was either included or purchased. Best time for breakfast is before 8am though, unless you like eating with crowds.

The BAD:

1. lackluster service: I unfortunately encountered an employee-in-training at the front desk who mistakenly ran my credit card through the processing machine, charging it in USD rather than the local currency and thus incurring a 5% additional processing fee for the currency conversion. To make matters worse, the manager came over and when he realized he couldn't cancel or reverse it (not sure how this is possible), tried to make up a story about how this is how all places in China charge US credit cards. 100% wrong - every other hotel we stayed at during our trip in China, as well as restaurants where we charged our credit card, charged in local RMB. To date, the hotel has done nothing to rectify this issue.

2. I didn't realize this hotel is located next to and shares walls with a NIGHT CLUB that plays loud music from around 10pm-4am EVERY NIGHT until I woke up to blaring bass the whole night. Then I looked up reviews and found that I'm not the only one :( I'm not sure whose genius idea it was to approve having a night club next to a hotel but it is possibly the worst idea ever. If you plan to forego sleep for convenience, then I guess you can consider staying here. I'd strongly recommend bringing earplugs and or noise cancelling headphones/earbuds. I wore earplugs AND noise cancelling headphones and could still faintly hear the bass line through the night. It was terrible.

3. general cleanliness of the room was subpar, and particularly the bathroom shower stall. It's as if they don't know what bleach is or something. I've never seen so many mold/mildew stains in the grout as I have here. The retractable clothes hanging line also wreaked of mildew.

If I ever return to Xi'an, I'll be looking to stay elsewhere unless the service improves and that blasted night club shuts down...

I’m not impressed with our stay at this hotel. We were assigned a room on the second floor which is probably the closest to the nightclub. Loud music all night long and doesn’t stop until 3:30-4am. Not sure whose idea it was to allow a nightclub to share walls/space with a hotel…fortunately my wife and kids are deep sleepers but I needed earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones and even then I could still hear the loud music through those. If it weren’t for such a short stay and packed itinerary, I would have requested another room for sure. Bathroom and especially shower are not well cleaned - You could see the mildew and mold stains on the grout lined in the shower which is a big indicator. Spraying with bleach and letting it sit for 15-20mins would likely work wonders. Breakfast was OK but it gets crowded after 8am. They aren’t super on top of refilling certain items either. Hotel staff is not very forthcoming or helpful to fix an error upon making a mistake and charging us in USD rather than RMB on their credit card machine - they insisted this is how it is done everywhere in China. Not true - for everywhere else we have stayed or were charged on our credit card, we were always charged in local currency and our credit card processor handles the conversion and exchange on the backend. Nothing has been done to make this right or correct the mistake even though they said I’d be contacted - btw: its a simple resolution that doesn’t require that I be called; just refund the amount of the conversion fee that was assessed. I will say that the tour concierge woman was very friendly and helpful. And the room attendants were pretty prompt with bringing extra supplies as needed. The hotel draws a relatively diverse crowd of people. The only thing this hotel has going for it is the convenience factor with location in the heart of Xi’an and breakfast. Consider the possibility of a rough night’s sleep though (I still can’t believe they thought it would be a good idea to approve having a nightclub next to a hotel). As an “Express” hotel I guess you can’t expect much but they could have done better...