El_Duderito

I'll check in in two days from now.
Does anybody know if club access includes free breakfast in the main restaurant?

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FLYGVA
moderator IHG Forum

El_Duderito

I've checked in a couple days ago and it's a great hotel.

I've booked the Superior Suite (including all benefits) on points. I've posted about this mistake earlier and the hotel honored the rate. They even applied the Ambassador upgrade to the next/highest level suite: Intercontinental Executive Suite.

Room

We received a small gift upon check-in (fridge magnet) but no welcome letter so there was a bit of guess work involved with regards to what the actual benefits are.
Soft drinks from the minibar are free for everybody. We had some laundry taken care of for free as well (at least I assume we won't be charged).
The fruit plate is a bit of a letdown with a single apple, pear and kiwi. There are four bottles of water per day.

The room itself is in a very good shape with little to no scratches.










Breakfast

Our room came with club access and that includes breakfast in the 3rd floor restaurant. The first day we had ten staff taking care of us. The level of attention was very good and they offered free Eggs Benedict.
The second day it was a bit more busy and a bunch of small issues showed. They forgot about our coffee order, did not bring spoons, salt, pepper, ... All small things but given that the first day was very close to perfect it definitely showed.
The restaurant design is quite nice and the buffet includes sushi, noodle soups and lots of good food. Some of the food on the hot plates gets a bit old/dry, though.







Lounge
The lounge on the 22nd floor was good as well. The food offering lacked a bit behind some of the other new ICs in China (e.g. Chengdu Century City)





Outside


Summary
While I want to try the Grand Hyatt Beijing this hotel is a great property and I would come back in a hearbeat. There are a few small 7-11 style supermarkets around the corner. The only downside for touristy things is that the next subway stations are a 7-10 minute walk away and not just around the corner.
Also taxi drivers don't know the property yet because even Google Maps doesn't show it.
We had little problems getting to the hotel with a printed address and the keycard sleeve, though.

delmolino

Stayed in the IC Sanlitun from Dec27 to Dec29.

Apologies for the bellow pics, they were taken with an old smart phone

We took a taxi from the airport and the driver had to call the property to confirm the address, no big deal but indeed people still don't know it. We arrived around 9am and they granted us an early check-in at that time, we have had early check-ins all the time in this trip to China and S. Korea, but this is low season / winter.

We thought the IC Beijing Sanlitun to be a very nice property with a contemporary design. We really liked the lobby


A nice touch is that they change the elevator carpet everyday:


Staff was always very nice and helpful despite some obvious difficulties with english everybody went beyond and above for us. We forgot to bring a power adaptor and they lent us one and after that showed us in the room where there were outlets we could use with no adaptor.

The only problem in our room is that the shower door did not seal properly leaking some water in the floor, but the room is exquisitely decorated and everything was brand new. The free Nespresso was a nice touch, I don't usually drink coffee and got hyper because of the quantity of caffeine I in-took there

What really blew my mind away though were the gym and pool facilities, very likely the best of any urban hotel we have stayed. There was some miscommunication when I first arrived there as it was very early in the morning - 6am I believe - and the person in the front desk did not speak English. I wanted to go to the Swimming pool and she sent me to the gym after giving me a small towel and a bottle of mineral water: nice touch.



I used google translator and showed the caracter of what supposedly was the swimming pool and the lady then gave me a wrist and made some signals that I think she was asking if I had my swimming cap and googles and after showing her that I got mine she sent me to the men's dress room. The wrist had a number on it and opened - by contact - a locker, I believe the wrist was waterproof but decided not to risk. From the dress room I went to the amazing swimming pool where I was the only one and swam some laps for about 40 minutes:


We received 2 free drinks - at the lobby bar - for being elite members and just like El_Duderito mentioned minibar contents were free of charge. We actually liked the "light show", but agree that it can be a little annoying for those who are around all the time:



After these 2 nights we spent 3 nights at the Grand Hyatt and it felt like a significant downgrade. The GC is also a nice property, but not as close as the IC Sanlitun though better located to explore the main attractions of downtown Beijing.

Another thing that I highly recommend is doing a long hike in the Great Wall, we went with Beijing Hikers to the Jinshanling section of the wall and it was amazing! We came back after that to the Mutianyu section and it almost felt "meh" for us after Jinshanling. And don't forget to get a VPN to access facebook, google (including gmail and google maps), instagram, bloomberg, etc...

Alawyer

Nice reviews! Looks like a good place to stay in the middle of the Beijing airpocalypse. The Topwin mall next to the hotel has some good restaurants in the basement.

nicolas75

+1

stimpy

I agree it looks great. I hope to try it out soon.

stimpy

I can now report myself and echo the posts above. This is an excellent new IC in a great neighborhood. Sanlitun has changed a lot over the years, but still has some fun bars and some new ones across the street from the entrance to the hotel. And now it has loads of high end retail shops too as you can tell from the 20 foot high Apple logo as you approach the mall.

I decided to splurge on the airport Merc to avoid any issues with finding the hotel. Plus I had hoped there might be some VIP service and plus the hotel said the car had WiFi. But as it turned out the WiFi didn't work. And while a nice girl met me as I walked off the plane, she could not help with bypassing immigration lines. It was only about 15 minutes anyways. She did walk me to the front of the baggage scanning queue though as I only had hand bags. And to the hotels credit they comped me on the return to the airport to make up for the lack of Wifi.

I was upgraded to a Superior Suite with Club which was nice. The hotel is relatively empty now, especially the club. Hopefully business will pick up as the weather gets better. That said, even though it's been cold and even snowed a few days ago, the air has been relatively clear. I could even make out the mountains from the 22nd floor club. Usually you can barely see across the street with the smog. So I thought it was a great time to visit.

Great hard and soft product and great location means I'm sure I will be back.

CPMaverick

Does anyone have a contact email for the Intercontinental Beijing Sanlitun concierge?

I have an upcoming stay and would like to request a visa invitation letter.

Thank you

Expat_852

When you expand the [Details] section of the website you will see the different contact information. The 'envelope' icon provides the following email address: [email protected].

https://www.ihg.com/intercontinental...e/hoteldetail#

moondog

Visa invitation letter? Unless you are running a conference at the hotel or similar, I can't imagine they would do such a thing.

Alawyer

For the purposes of a China tourist visa, a printout of the confirmed reservation page should suffice as proof of accommodation. Most visa offices and Customs in Beijing IMHO haven't asked for this.

If you need one for a business visit, then this should come from the Chinese company you are working with there.

CPMaverick

Thanks so much! The hotel responded quickly and knew exactly what I needed. Cheers.

I don't need a visa (have a 10yr) but my sister is staying with me and she needs the tourist visa. While some consulates will accept an itinerary in lieu of an invitation letter, a letter is preferable. In our case our itinerary is a bit unusual so I wanted a letter. The reservation is in my name not hers (her name is on the reservation but not shown in any of the confirmations I could generate online), so it makes it that much more of a potential problem.

An invitation letter written in Chinese is the best way to avoid any problems. One of the perks of booking a full-service property is you hope they can do things like this and quickly. So I'm quite satisfied with that!

moondog

I disagree. KISS is always the best way to approach PRC bureaucracy; inserting unsolicited letters into the mix violates this principle.

CPMaverick

That's quite alright, you can have your opinions. The hotel already did something 'unimaginable' so perhaps you have a narrow view of how things are done.

I am comfortable with my methods and my consulate (not my first time). I only needed the hotel contact information, this is not a visa discussion thread. I only delved into it because of general interest, and have nothing more to add. Cheers.

Bowgie

I should know better, in a hurry, and did not look at a second check-out invoice that switched the credit card currency from yuan to dollars. Just as bad, the charge to my Chase IHG credit card was paid as purchase to a Chinese real estate partnership, not an IHG hotel property, and I'll now have to write in to Chase to get my 5x points for IHG stays credited.
Needless-to-say, I am angry and disappointed that an otherwise good stay is ruin by a cheap con-game at check-out.

I won't be back. The nearby Conrad is priced far more reasonably, and did not cheat me on my stay the night before the IC.

UPDATE:^
I received this follow-up from the hotel:

"Unfortunately upon your departure the Front Desk charged your bill from local Yuan to Dollar without notification. Please accept our sincere apologies for this, we immediately contacted Bank of China to correct the transaction. Kindly allow it processes in another couple of days done which the USD15.7 rate difference will come back to your bank account soon. You are our IHG top loyalty Platinum Ambassador, your comments are truly and extremely important to us. For our hotel always claims to deliver a “hassle-free” experience but obviously it failed to you this time. I do hope you could give us opportunity and will still consider we are a right place to enjoy despite this matter. We will definitely use it to fine tune our operating procedure and keep continuous improvement. We wish to welcome you back whenever your travels or business brings you again to Beijing..."

True to their word, the DCC charge was refunded.

IC Saniltun is an amazing property. I was upgraded to a corner Delux room, which is more like a junior suite. The room is modern and high-end in every way without being ostentatious. F&B is fairly priced by IC standards. The Tapas Bar restaurant served an outstanding served-in-the-pan paella. There are some room rate price-for-value and location concerns (pole dancing girls aren't my thing), but I would not cross the property off a future stay list out-of-hand anymore. ^