Holiday Inn Shifu Guagnzhou, 11th floor, no smoking, for Priority Club gold member on 18th March 2010. Total charge per room including tax is CNY 628 per day. Very large room with very large bathroom. European style tub / shower combination. Hotel lobby is actually at the 4th floor. The hotel front entrance is at the 1st floor with elevator to take you to the hotel lobby. Breakfast not included. One free drink coupon for the lobby bar. Requested quiet room, and was given room next to elevator, which we can hear the elevator door noise. Ancient CRT tube TV with a few hotel cable channels, HBO, CNN, CNBC, Hong Kong non-digital, GZ local, TVS & the set of CCTV. We had noisy neighbors. The street noise level is high. Hate the loud door slams. Stained carpet is poor choice of flooring in this high humidity region, but nice not have to listen to upstairs walking and chair shuffling. Forced to listen to 9am loud speaker morning exercise from school yard across the street.
Had major hassle with hotel staff. Before we cross into China, we exchanged CNY with US dollars at HSBC bank in Hong Kong. On March 19 Friday morning, we were to purchase bus tour tickets at this business office (shown in picture) next to the reception in the lobby. This lady working in this business office claimed our CNY 100 bills are fake. She toke our CNY 100 bills and ran through this money counting machine in the middle of front counter at the lobby reception. We are flabbergasted with her claimed and did not purchase any tour, checked out of the hotel that day and left China and returned to Hong Kong. We toke these same CNY bills and exchanged back to US dollars at the HSBC bank without any problems.
Internet charge CNY 1.00 per min, up to 100 per day. This is higher than the Sheraton or Hyatt here, and those hotels also offer free WiFi at lobby. Yuck.
No recommend to walk from hotel to subway line 1 Changshoulu station. Taxi, if you get it at Metro station, is usually around CNY 7 to 9 to the hotel. Walking direction is difficult, and none available in any internet map (be it Google or Baidu map), nor hotel web site. In Guangzhou, use the Metro subway to get around is positive. However, many major stations’ few ticket machines have long lines and large crowds. Strongly recommend to buy the CNY80 “Standard Monthly Card – called Yang Cheng Tong” (CNY50 is of the fare which can add more, and CNY30 is refundable card fee) – actually I was told this card is to be used for long term, not monthly.
Exit hotel to you left is the ShiFu walking shopping mall (one of the two in Guangzhou – the other is at Peking Road). Quite busy and crowd with teenagers and twentisomething shops and restaurants and fast food, such as KFC.

Email to Holiday Customer Service, and received form letter from Customer relations in Australia. And that was that.