I have read all about why everyone seems to hate the location of the St Regis. I assume this relates mostly to tourists who want to be near the Bund. Shanghai is rather a bit like Tokyo in that if you are doing business on the Bund, that is where you stay and if you are in Pudong, that is where you stay.

I have used the St Regis a couple of times in the last 2 months and like the hotel – I also think the GM is the single best feature of the hotel!

In the past when doing business near the Bund I have always stayed at the Four Seasons, which frankly has rather underwhelmed me (not up to FS standards)

We just closed on the purchase of a company with HQ in Ocean Tower, which is 3 blocks from the Westin so I put my deal team in there for the last two weeks and arrived on Wednesday for the closing.

What a disaster!

I was booked into a Crown Deluxe mini suite, which was confirmed IN PERSON no less than 3 times by my staff staying at hotel. When I arrived I was put in a deluxe room. I complained and was told that it was what we had booked. When I pushed on both what we were told and my Plat status, they offered a deluxe executive floor room. I inquired about whether they had suites available and was told they had several and he would get me a price for one. Back and forth about Plat upgrade and the fact that we were told we were booking a suite anyway and I finally got them to put me in a mini suite (Mini being the operative word!!!!)

NO other plat recognition of any kind.

Design is a personal point of taste, but I can generally say that I find the hotel to be rather tasteless in style – way to fashion forward and it is apparently owned by the same Singaporean who owns the St Regis.

Service was the real issue here. Problem after problem after problem for the whole time. My team (13 people there for a total of 107 collective room nights) said that they had constant issues the entire time. In my case, it was things like calling at 4, 4:30 and 5:15 to have my room service lunch trolley removed and having it still in the room when I returned from dinner. Laundry marked for overnight that took 2 FULL days. Missed turn down, missed wakeup calls, sheets no changed (even using the silly card on the bed) and an HVAC running crazy (room at over 26 degrees and entire stay – same in my staff’s rooms – engineering saying that it was between weather cycles and nothing they could do – taking 1 whole day to get someone who could open the windows!)

All in all, back to the Four Seasons for business in this area. Very sad in light of all the nice things said here about the hotel.

Let me once again however, add my endorsement of the St Regis - still a bit odd in decor, but very well run!.