Stay report on February 27, 2010
Arrival
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Taxi from airport is fairly quick, about 20 minutes. The hotel is in the newly designated CBD area (soon-to-be expensive area) adjacent to the newly built Wanda Shopping Mall. Unlike InterContinental, Crown Plaza and Shangri-la, there is not seaview at this hotel and much much to see in the neighborhood. There is construction going on surround the hotel and will remain that way for a while, I guess. My first Impression of the hotel is -- Quite nice.
Check-in
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I called the hotel yesterday inquiring about the upgrade policy, as my reservation still shows the lowest category room I booked at SPG website at only about $70 net(a steal per Asia Red Hot Sale). I was told that they will upgrade platinum to suite subject to availability, but couldn't confirm the upgrade yet. But when I arrived at the front desk, a corner suite has already been assigned to me. Check in only takes a minute or two. Front desk staff was very friendly and gave me two tickets for the Qingdao Beer Museum.
Guest Relation Manager escorted me to the elevator and gave me a nice thumb size disk with leather cover. Nice welcome gift.
Room
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Nice two room corner suite with separate guest bathroom, walking closet, two sofas, 2 flat TVs and one small TV in the bathroom facing the bathtub(All TVs made by Haier which is headquartered in Qingdao), Sony DVD player. Cool and Fashion design. It's the classic suite on the SPG website.
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/prefer...sId=1002978223. At InterContinental Qingdao, upgrade policy for RA is a premier room (a 59 sq. meter two room junior suite) or a premier aqua room (a 79 sq. meter room including a 30 sq. meter patio with a jacuzzi -- nice in the summer). At this time of the year, the corner suite at Le Meridien beats the premier room at InterCon.
Welcome desserts, snack and fruit already in the room.
From my room, I saw 6 tennis courts across the street. It was sunny, and I have my racket with me. After two hours of tennis, I relaxed in the bathtub watching Winter Olympics while enjoying the sunset.
Executive Lounge & Breakfast
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I was the only person in the lounge at happy hour (4 months old hotel in winter low season). The lounge is not that big. But happy hour spread is quite nice: hot platters even include scallop and Japanese seafood.
Lounge staff are very friendly. One lounge staff talked to me for almost an hour offering all kinds of advices about local restaurants, things to do, etc. They asked me whether they can take my picture for training other staff in the hotel, so that they will recognize me. I politely declined.
Club floor guests can have breakfast either at the lounge or Last Recipe restaurant on the first floor. The buffet spread at Last Recipe is fairly generous. It has more than the usual share of Japanese food, probably because there are quite a few Japanese companies in Qingdao.
Service
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Service is great, warm and friendly. One of the platinum (executive club) benefits is one piece clothing pressing. 10 minutes after I got into my room at about 11am, house keeping came in to check the air conditioning. I gave her my jacket and she said: We will return this in the afternoon. Is that Ok? Sure enough, after I came back from tennis, the jacket is already hanging in the closet.
The hotel staff kept asking me about my impression of the hotel and opinions to improve the service. So I came up three things (not that I am dissatisfied with the hotel):
1. The signs in the elevators are a bit confusing. They are not aligned to a specific floor and used a line to link several floors to a sign. Unfortunately, the dim lighting in the elevators makes the lines difficult to read.
2. There is no sign to the Executive Lounge after one gets off the elevator at 29th floor.
3. One strange thing is that although the adjacent mall is linked to the hotel, there is no way to walk to the mall inside the hotel. You have to walk out of the hotel to get to the mall. I asked why and was told that they did this on purpose for security reasons(A non-issue, in my view, with key accessed elevators). Well, there is not much the hotel can do on this at this point.
Again what I told them, the hotel staff came back to me with half an hour and told me that they will make sure the signs be corrected. Very responsive.
Overall, this is a nice new hotel with friendly staff. Unless I want the ocean view, I would come back to stay here anytime.