reddevil0728

Anybody been to either or both?

Which will you prefer?

Aventine

The Plaza for bigger rooms and a very decent Executive Lounge. Location between the two could be a wash.

MSPeconomist

The Plaza is a big modern hotel but well respected. It's in a marvelous location for tourist things and shopping. You're also almost on top of a subway station. This seems to be a "local" hotel rather than part of an international chain.

Unfortunately, I can't picture the Courtyard but it's a limited service hotel brand that's part of Marriott.

SkiAdcock

Autograph Collection properties are more boutique type than cookie-cutter.

Courtyards in Asia are more like full service properties than limited service. For example, the Courtyard has an executive lounge that is open daily if the OP is elite w/ Marriott or is willing to pay for an exec level room.

There's a thread on the CY in the Marriott forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...namdaemun.html

There's also a thread re: the Plaza in the Marriott forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...ighlight=Seoul

Cheers.

Srisarin

-dup-

Srisarin

The Plaza is well respected (with VERY limited designation as a Marriott/Autograph Collection property) and centrally located however it certainly is not modern (built over 40 years ago) and taxi drivers still need GPS from the airport express station to find it.

mikesaidyes

You can also just tell a taxi driver Seoul City Hall ( Seoul She Cheong is how you would pronounce it in Korean). It's directly across from The Plaza (literally, separated by Seoul Plaza aka Seoul Gwang Jang).

MSPeconomist

It's a modern building, meaning modern architecture in style. I didn't say that it was a new hotel.

mrjay

I can't speak for the Plaza but I recently stayed several nights at the Courtyard Namdaemun and would highly recommend it. Everything was quite nice and exceeded my expectations of an Asian Courtyard property... the rooms, the exec lounge staff and its food and beverage were very good, all the hotel staff I interacted with spoke excellent English. The hotel shuttle runs several times a day to/from Seoul Station (train station) and a couple of tourist spots. I was there before and after spending a week cycling and hiking on Jeju Island and I was extremely happy that the Courtyard has a laundry room where I could wash all my sweaty clothes for only 10k Won.

As to location, it's right across the street from the Namdaemun Street Markets, which I quite enjoyed and you can use the underground mall as kind of a short-cut to cross under the busy street to the street markets. The exec lounge and my room had a nice view of Mount Namsan and the street markets.
A minus to the location is that you do have to walk a few minutes to get to the metro station.

mosburger

I would ditch both choices and go for the Namdaemun Fraser Suites.

Nice, wooden interiors and good service I've also lived in this area for several years and this is my other favourite hotel apart from the Millenium Hilton up on the Namsan