St. R is about 1 mile East of GH. The GH is closer to center city (Tianenmen Sq and Forbidden City and all that stuff) and right on Wangfujiang (Sp?), a street with lots of cool stuff. St. R is close to the Embassies and the Silk Market (a cool place to go to shop for souveniers, knockoffs, etc). I stopped staying at GH a couple years ago because I didn't seem to be getting Diamond benefits there, but others recently seem to have more success. One difference though is that I always book the cheapest room and hope for an upgrade, others seem to book a more expensive room and have better luck than I. The way it seems to work is that they seem to upgrade 1 room category or something like that. Plus GH has gotton awfully expensive in the last couple years. St. R is nice and as an SPG Plat I got upgraded to Suites there (last time a nice 1-bedroom Suite with 2 bathrooms.......~1000SqFt probably, I think it was called a Statesmens Suite..........and this was on the cheapest rate on spg.com, in fact I think it was their prepaid rate). I personally would stick with St. R from now on with the exception of if it was during FFN season, then I'd probably stay at GH. Both are nice and both have great pools and gyms. I'd also take into account price probably. Sometimes St. R is waaay overpriced, sometimes its dirt cheap. Similar with GH, although the rates don't vary as much there IMHO. And finally, both hotels are on the main street & subway line that goes straight across Beijing from East to West, so things are fairly accessible from either hotel..............