Originally Posted by
narvik
(bolding mine)
This is pretty much a huge YMMV in my experience.
I stayed at a few big chain hotels in Langfang, Hebei recently, and whereas the Chinese breakfast selections were adequate, the Western selections were horrendous and inedible (processed, salty bacon substitute with painted-on fake 'stripes', plastic sausages, red colored sweetened baked beans, and scrambled eggs out of a bottle, etc.)
I think when they opened these hotels likely all had great offerings, but as time went on, and hardly any Westerners stayed at these hotels, and only a few locals chose the Western breakfast options, they reduced quality over time to where it's now best to avoid it at all costs.
(Coffee was also hit-'n-miss, although mostly okay.)
Since the OP is focused on the 3 most touristed cities in China, I don't think he needs to worry about breakfast quality in chain hotels, which IME is quite good (though, I'm not exactly breakfast connoisseur; I don't typically eat breakfast unless it's thrust upon me).
And, given that the OP is feeding 5 people, and morning calories could provide useful fuel for some of his ambitious excursions, I can definitely see value in hotel breakfasts.
That having been said, I personally wouldn't permit the free breakfast carrot to have too much influence in hotel selection. And, I'd also like to draw attention to the pains many FTers go through in order to maintain brand loyalty in China...many end up staying in the middle of nowhere just to be able to hang out in a lounge for 2 hours every night and sleep in a marginally larger room.
But, IHG (free breakfasts for bookings via the app) has a decent footprint in all 3 of the OP's cities, and Hilton is okay in 2 of them (e.g. the Surpass card that [MENTION=17434]YariGuy[/MENTION] mentioned could possibly make sense for the OP's trip).