Check In

We had left our luggage at our previous hotel, and our passports were there, so when our walking/shopping trip took us near the Sofitel we went to the club lounge and asked if we could get our room keys to drop our shopping off, but they refused as I only had a copy of my passport. So we went to collect our IDs and only then were allowed to check-in. I understand this is the law, but would have appreciated being allowed to leave our shopping in the room.

Once we returned with our paperwork, we checked-in in the club lounge, and were told that we received an upgrade to a suite, 2 drink vouchers and club access. Great! No waiting for the check-in and the staff was friendly.

Room

We had booked a superior room, but were given the room 1514 on the 15th floor, this is a Junior Suite.

Junior suite at the sofitel Hyland. A desk on the right, a couch on the left and the bed in the back of the room.

The hotel discribes this room as being 45m², but I find this very hard to believe, as you can see it isn't big.

The floor plan, with our room on the top-left corner.

The rooms offered a sleep menu, with different pillows, sleep amneties (mask, ear plugs...) but we didn't take noote of this, the bed was great and we slept really well.

There was also 1 pair of slippers (and no bathrobe), but the slippers were really bad! Not the usual Sofitel ones that I have encountered, they were paper thin and not soft.

There was no iron in the room either, but we were offered 1 free item of clothing pressed for free per stay (but by the time we needed to iron something we wouldn't have had time to wait for them to press it so didn't use the service)

Bathroom

The bathroom was almost the same lenth as the bedroom, with a WC in the first part, then a sink, then wash section, with a bathtub on one side and the shower on the other side.

The bathroom amneties are advertised as being: LANVIN for the superior and club rooms, and either Lanvin or Hermes for the prestige suite.

In our junior suite we received Essential Sofitel which were not great:

The bathroom was not perfect either if you want to be picky, there were stains on the wall, the shower was leaking, the shelf with the shower liquids was loose so the small bottles kept falling and the sealant on the floor was also loose. (you can't see properly in this picture, but about 10-15cm of it was not fixed and moving around during the shower.

Overall the bathroom was large, had enough (not great quality) amneties but was showing some traces of wear and tear.

Location

The hotel has an entrance on Nanjing Road East, a shopping street, so it can be a great location if that is what you are looking for. It is also less than 5 minutes from the Subway station Nanjing Road (East) if you take the correct exit (#4) and there are "direct" trains to people square (1 stop) Hongqiao airport (to the west) and Pudong airport (about 1 hour away by train, and you just need to transfer from the line 2 to the line 2 extention).

We stayed here due to the central location.

Amenities

Here I will talk about the club lounge, some really good quality food and drinks, a nice service but not enough information about the offering.

As the hotel offers club rooms first when you select a room here on the accor website, I guess that quite a lot of people book club rooms (maybe without noticing that they are more expensive) and therefore the club was always crowded.

The lounge is split into 3 parts, one "library" with books, a couple of cumputers and was quiter during ou stay.

A part with 2 groups of couches:

And the main section that was larger and had the food and drinks offering.

The main area, with a buffet table in the middle.

The service in the lounge was great, it didn't seem to be self-serve drinks, they can serve everything for you except for juices in the morning (but you can go to the drinks part, and help yourself or ask to be served there).

At check-in we were told that there would be happy hour and breakfast served in the lounge, and we also saw people getting afternoon tea but they didn't tell us about it for some reason.

Lets start with the happy hour offering, they have a selection of drinks:

5 options for red wine, including 1 chinese bottle

4 options for white wine and some prosecco

Some tea bags, and they also offer tea pots with different teas

Beer and soft drinks, the beers were Corona, Heineken and Tsingtao.

They also offer cocktails, but this isn't advertised, the waiter said that they have G&T and Margherita's, and more. When they were cleaning up I saw about 10 bottles of spirits (that came from the preparation area, so not the drinks area where I took the pictures above).

Regarding the food offering, the buffet area is in the midle of the lounge, and here were the options:

Cold cuts with some delicious smoked duck!

Really nice cheeses!

One of the best salmon's I have ever tasted (the gravelax(?) on the right)

Some sauces and chrisps

Unapealing hot options

Great Dim-sum and some fried noodles

Bread and french butter

They also got some cakes out at 19:30 (the happy hour service started at 18:00)

At the end of the service (20:00), the staff went around and fulled up everybodies drinks, which was a nice gesture. As you can see, we were impressed about the food offerings for this happy hour. Plenty for a meal (unfortunately we had a dinner date so couldn't even try everything).

This is what was on offer for breakfast, when we arrived we were asked what hot drinks we would like, I got coffee that was served in a french press, and my partner got tea in a teapot. They also brought a basket of bread (with french baguette, a couple of croisants and pain au chocolat's) and some home made butter. It all tasted really good (the coffee was stong, but I like strong coffee so all good for me!)

There was a menu to order hot food:

Introduction of the breakfast menu

Cooked to order options. I went for the pancakes:

They are nicely presented, but unfortunately they tasted watery... So I didn't apreaciate them that much.

And the buffet options:

Bread options (on top of the basked that they gave us). There are also a bunch of cakes next to the bread (not the greatest offering anyhow) but I dont seem to have a picture.

Juices (they were not great) and an empty bottle of sparkling water (I am not sure if they change it but it was empty when we arrived)

Hot options

Dumplings and cold cuts

Cheeses (not as good selection as during the evening) and salad

Fresh fruit.

Missing in the pictures are the cakes/pastries (as said above they didn't offer the best selection) and the honey, there was a whole slab of a bee hive with the honey comb which I found really cool.

Overall we were not as impressed with the breakfast offering than with the happy hour offering.

Service

Regarding the platinum benefits, we were granted:

-Room upgrade to a corner room/junior suite

-2 welcome drinks that we could use foor beer, wine and I think some spirits. The drink voucher stated that they had home brewed beer, so I asked for one but they said that they only had Tsingtao so I didn't bother using the voucher

-Late check-out, I asked for 20:00 (and wouldn't have minded paying, but didn't explicitely state this), but they said it wasn't possible, so was granted 17:00

-A welcome letter:

-A decent welcome gift:

Overall

Overall, this is a decent 4 star offering in the center of Shanghai for a good night's sleep, not too expensive but not luxurious. There is no pool. The happy hour offering in the lounge was not the largest offering but was high quality. The platinum status is recognised but don't expect a personalised or attentive interation with the staff due to the high number of club guests.

If we were to return to Shanghai on holiday we might return to the Sofitel Oriental Sheshan that is outside of town due to the overall experience that was just so much better (review to come, but I have just under 150 photos of the place to go through first).