Hotel & Car Recommendations in Shenzhen, China!
Apr 25, 2006, 3:16 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2004
Programs: CO Plat, SPG Plat
Posts: 324
Hotel & Car Recommendations in Shenzhen, China!
Does anyone have any hotel or car recommendations in Shenzhen. I need to go for business and there isn't alot of reviews on TripAdvisor for hotels.
Thanks guys,
Flyertalker Bidhere23
Thanks guys,
Flyertalker Bidhere23
Apr 25, 2006, 3:28 am
#2
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: lawn guylandt
Programs: AA million miler
Posts: 478
shenzhen is a huge area- it can take several hours to go from your hotel to a factory and still be in shenzhen
even the downtown "city" is spread out and with horrible traffic jams
i stayed at the hilton- it was just ok, even on the executive floor
lots of hookers and touts on the sidewalks- not pleasant at all
but i never needed to rent a car and driver- if you are on business, i think you can expect your contacts to send their car and driver for you
just arrange it in advance and lay out your trips on a map so you don't find yourself driving hours out of town each day to only wind up in the same factory area!
but there are a number of brand new hotels just opened- like a four points- but i have no experience with them
even the downtown "city" is spread out and with horrible traffic jams
i stayed at the hilton- it was just ok, even on the executive floor
lots of hookers and touts on the sidewalks- not pleasant at all
but i never needed to rent a car and driver- if you are on business, i think you can expect your contacts to send their car and driver for you
just arrange it in advance and lay out your trips on a map so you don't find yourself driving hours out of town each day to only wind up in the same factory area!
but there are a number of brand new hotels just opened- like a four points- but i have no experience with them
Apr 25, 2006, 6:30 am
#3
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Hong Kong
Posts: 247
Speaking of hookers...mtacchi and I were at the Shenzhen Airport Hotel a few weeks ago, and a knock at the door at 1130pm revealed 2 hookers whose jaws dropped when they saw me standing there in my jammies. They stuttered that they were sorry and ran down the hall...and this was supposed to be a "decent" hotel.
I have stayed at the Crowne Plaza Shenzhen and at the Shenzhen Airport Hotel, and would recommend the following:
Stay at the Shangri-La, hire a car and driver from there. For entertainment, there is a district called Shekou with a Starbucks, restaurants and disco. Also - Lowu Shopping Center is across the street from Shangri-La...lots of deals to be had.
Don't stay any more time than you have to - Shenzhen isn't exactly "the place to be".
I have stayed at the Crowne Plaza Shenzhen and at the Shenzhen Airport Hotel, and would recommend the following:
Stay at the Shangri-La, hire a car and driver from there. For entertainment, there is a district called Shekou with a Starbucks, restaurants and disco. Also - Lowu Shopping Center is across the street from Shangri-La...lots of deals to be had.
Don't stay any more time than you have to - Shenzhen isn't exactly "the place to be".
Apr 25, 2006, 1:10 pm
#5
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 153
China has more armpits than a millipede, but Shenzhen is certainly one them--a gimcrack, shiftless, fly-by-night sort of place made from hideous jerry-built towers between which shuffle touts, pimps ("Hello! Miss?"), and assorted scam artists.
Attempts are made to prevent Chinese from coming here using internal border controls--be prepared to show your passport even if arriving from elsewhere in China. There are no Shenzhen natives, but only people from all over China who've arrived to seek rumoured riches, and end up in construction, sweat-shops, prostitution, or destitution.
Almost no Chinese-run hotel anywhere in China is a "decent" hotel, and to have prostitution services on site, based in the aptly named beauty parlour (it's full of beauties), the health centre, the massage centre, or the sauna. Sometimes there are competing operations working out of two or more of these, and your phone rings off the hook. Even most familiar foreign names have informal prostitution to which a blind eye it turned, or management of the beauty parlour or sauna is sub-contracted to keep it at arms' length. But in somewhere like the Shangri-La you won't get any phone calls nor knocks on the door.
I'd second the recommendation of the Shangri-La with the only caveat that it really is right in the middle of the push and shove, and the sleeve-tugging pimps, and one of the more recently opened foreign-name hotels might be a little further out where the city is fractionally more pleasant.
Certainly shopping at Luo Hu (Lo Wu) should be avoided unless you like having your pocket picked both figuratively and literally. Even the Chinese admit this: a sign in both characters and entertaining English lists all the various different forms of theft and scamming that you should look out for. Anything you can buy at Luo Hu you'll find cheaper almost anywhere else in China, including Beijing; and indeed even including Shenzhen itself if you venture just a little further afield.
I once flew in from Kunming with a member of Shenzhen's town planning department who had made research trips (tax-payer-funded jollies) to Paris, Rome, and Las Vegas. We arrived in the dark but he promised me that in the morning I would see that the city was now more beautiful than Paris. "More beautiful even than Rome," he said. Your view is very likely to differ.
If you're familiar with Brech and Weill's "Mahagonny", Shenzhen is their imagined city made flesh, and with Chinese characteristics.
Attempts are made to prevent Chinese from coming here using internal border controls--be prepared to show your passport even if arriving from elsewhere in China. There are no Shenzhen natives, but only people from all over China who've arrived to seek rumoured riches, and end up in construction, sweat-shops, prostitution, or destitution.
Almost no Chinese-run hotel anywhere in China is a "decent" hotel, and to have prostitution services on site, based in the aptly named beauty parlour (it's full of beauties), the health centre, the massage centre, or the sauna. Sometimes there are competing operations working out of two or more of these, and your phone rings off the hook. Even most familiar foreign names have informal prostitution to which a blind eye it turned, or management of the beauty parlour or sauna is sub-contracted to keep it at arms' length. But in somewhere like the Shangri-La you won't get any phone calls nor knocks on the door.
I'd second the recommendation of the Shangri-La with the only caveat that it really is right in the middle of the push and shove, and the sleeve-tugging pimps, and one of the more recently opened foreign-name hotels might be a little further out where the city is fractionally more pleasant.
Certainly shopping at Luo Hu (Lo Wu) should be avoided unless you like having your pocket picked both figuratively and literally. Even the Chinese admit this: a sign in both characters and entertaining English lists all the various different forms of theft and scamming that you should look out for. Anything you can buy at Luo Hu you'll find cheaper almost anywhere else in China, including Beijing; and indeed even including Shenzhen itself if you venture just a little further afield.
I once flew in from Kunming with a member of Shenzhen's town planning department who had made research trips (tax-payer-funded jollies) to Paris, Rome, and Las Vegas. We arrived in the dark but he promised me that in the morning I would see that the city was now more beautiful than Paris. "More beautiful even than Rome," he said. Your view is very likely to differ.
If you're familiar with Brech and Weill's "Mahagonny", Shenzhen is their imagined city made flesh, and with Chinese characteristics.
Apr 25, 2006, 2:59 pm
#6
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 153
I forgot to add that booking a car and driver from a hotel like the Shangri-La will be a very expensive option indeed, and you'll do a great deal better simply to use taxis. If you have a list of destinations you can stop a few the previous day and bargain for a day's use the following day, not on the meter. The result should be considerably less than the equivalent flat meter rate times the numbers of km you expect to travel. The meter rates are amongst China's highest, and don't forget that the rate posted on the side of the cab jumps by 50% after 15km. But even on the meter, the result should be considerably less than hotel car rates.