I couldn’t find a dedicated thread for this property so posting a review on our recent stay in Beijing here as it might be useful for other travellers, especially if one doesn’t speak perfect Mandarin:

Since Hyatt started this joint venture with a Chinese brand, I was super curious to see what it’s about so this trip to China was finally our chance to see! Unfortunately, this particular property is simply a renovated old local hotel and this shows throughout. On arrival, only one staff member spoke a tiny bit of English which wasn’t ideal (and kudos to him!), but we managed.

Unfortunately, our Globalist status somehow had not “transferred” into the Urcove system so we had to debate the breakfast inclusion. Generally asking about breakfast I can muster with the little Mandarin I’ve learnt but a debate like this is way beyond my skills. In the end, I showed him my Hyatt app, he took a picture of it and somehow that granted us our breakfast (which turned out to be pretty awful anyway but more on that later).

Strangely, Urcove hotels insist on payment on arrival and wouldn’t accept American Express , this chain is the only Hyatt property-type we encountered in all over China that didn’t. After paying we were sent to our room, which of course was not an upgraded room category, as our status had not been recognised.

The room looked nice enough at first and had clearly been renovated after Hyatt took over. On first glance, it looks very very similar to any Hyatt Place elsewhere- nice wooden floorboards, smallish sized but not outrageously tiny, a very comfortable bed, okay enough bathroom. Unfortunately, this being an old building started to show as the deadlock on the door wasn’t operating and the rooms had paper-thin walls, so we constantly heard the family with their two annoying little screechers next door causing a rockus but also doors slamming, people talking, all that jazz. The worst, however, was the aircon that simply did not work which seems to be all too common in China- as per usual, it showed all sorts of phantasy temperatures on the display but then turned out to be not individually controlled at all and temperature remained way too hot throughout. So in order to get some air at all, we needed to sleep with the window open which was noisy and uncomfortable. This was in April, so during the Summer months it would be totally unbearable. Wifi is an issue at this property too and at UrCoves in general. There is the normal hyatt wifi appearing on your list of available wifis but unfortunately this doesn’t work, instead you must login to the wifi via WeiXin (WeChat). So lucky for me, not so lucky for my partner who did not have WeChat installed. A really good benefit, however, were the free laundry facilities which were of good, clean quality. They provide washing detergent, it’s built into the machine. This is great if Beijing is neither first nor last on your China-itinerary.

We decided to have Hotpot and Beijing Duck in the restaurant the first night but really struggled as the restaurant seems to be operated by a third party and thus no one spoke English, and they only accepted cash (!), not even WeiXin (WeChat) or Ali. The Beijing duck was VERY average and the hot put just boring but at least the meal was pretty cheap.




Breakfast in the same place was also not much better with a coffee machine that was constantly under repair and black tea only available from a dispenser which tasted as bad as it sounds. The saving grace was a little made-to-order cart by the side which produced decent noodle bowls and even omelettes.

Finally, the one redeeming factor for this property is, of course, the location. Wow oh wow, it really doesn’t get any better as a tourist in Beijing. Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City are literally 10 minutes away, on foot, if that! Beijing is a big and fairly difficult city so this is a HUGE advantage, especially if you’re here for the first time, as we were. Plenty of sights, food, shopping, everything, all in walking distance. One side effect of walking around so much was that we got to see the back of the hotel and the rest of the building, which explained why it is so noisy outside at night: Let’s just say that from the back, the hotel building isn’t the fanciest of places and looks more like a rundown youth hostel than a Hyatt!



So our final verdict: If you speak a bit of Mandarin and want a relatively affordable accommodation right in the centre of Beijing (or if you just so badly need this brand stamp in your Hyatt Brand Explorer collection), just be aware of the downsides but by all means, stay here, it is “good enough”. But if you need a working aircon (sweltering Beijing Summer, anyone?) or want to ensure your Hyatt status gets recognised (or simply prefer using your American Express card for payment like, you know, in literally any Hyatt property anywhere else in the world), then maybe fork out a bit more to stay somewhere fancier.