Sofitel Shanghai Hongqiao

Old Nov 27, 2018, 2:05 am
  #1  
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Sofitel Shanghai Hongqiao

Sofitel Shanghai Hongqiao

Map| 1 Review | 100% Recommended

Sofitel Shanghai Hongqiao

No 666 Taihong Road Minhang District Shanghai, 201107

Sofitel Shanghai Hongqiao (21 Photos)

Sofitel Shanghai Hongqiao

Location

The hotel is located close to Hongqiao Railway Station and Airport. It is about a 30min walk from the railway station. There is no metro station nearby, and it is a 10-minute drive by taxi to the railway station or airport. It is located close to the NECC and the Hongqiao CBD.

The location is not too convenient for trips to downtown, which will take 45 minutes once you do make it on to the metro. If you plan to spend significant time downtown, stay closer to the city.

Check In

Prior to our stay, I sent an email to the hotel providing some information and requests for the room, and requesting information regarding Club lounge times and complimentary Platinum breakfast. I never received a reply, which was not a good first impression.

Although there were no other guests checking in at the time we arrived at the lobby, the guest service agent noticed we were platinum members and escorted us to the Club lounge for check in, which is on the 8th floor. There were no other guests checking in at the time of our arrival, so we were attended to straight away. We were offered drinks, which we declined, but they still brought over some water, which was nice.

The check-in in the lounge was fast and efficient, with the staff member having a good level of English proficiency. Early check-in was permitted at 1pm.

I was informed I had been upgraded. Two drink vouchers were provided. The drink vouchers could be used for soft drink, juice, tea, coffee and a small selection of cocktails and mocktails in the bar on the ground floor. I cannot remember if wine was included or not.

We were escorted to our room by the Club staff member.

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  • Drink vouchers

Room

I apologise in advance for taking photos after we had placed some of my things in the room. I'm still getting used to taking photos immediately upon arrival for the purpose of reviews.

The room was on the 8th floor, which is the highest floor, due to the building restrictions surrounding the airport. We booked a Luxury Room and received an upgrade to a Prestige Suite, as this hotel does not have Junior Suites. Our room was located next to the elevators (my profile says away from elevators), but we did not notice much noise during our stay.

The welcome gift was already placed in the room, along with a personalised typed welcome letter. Interestingly, they type your points balance on the letter, and the printed value on my letter was nowhere near close to my actual balance.

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  • Welcome gift.

 

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  • Welcome letter

 

This hotel is quite new and very well furnished in a Parisian style with plush furniture and hanging lighting pieces. The Sofitel MyBed is amazing as always, and my partner organised a lavender pillow with the sleep menu (which was difficult to locate, it was hidden in the folder in the desk). The room has very high ceilings, giving it a very roomy feeling. The room has a working desk, and a table suitable for dining with two chairs. There is a TV in both the bedroom and living room, but are placed in cubbies, so there is no access to USB ports (this annoys me), though the living room TV does have an input station at the desk.

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  • Bedroom, with my stuff everywhere already. The panda does not come with the room.

 

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  • View of living room from the entrance, again featuring our things everywhere

 

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  • Living room

 

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  • Dining table

 

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  • The light fixtures were quite showy

 

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  • The view of the entrance from the sofa

 

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  • Closet

 

There are two bathrooms in the room. The guest bathroom has a toilet and sink. The main bathroom has that annoying glass window that all hotel rooms have these days, which allow someone from the bedroom to see into the shower. An electric blind is provided. It has a separate bath and shower. The water pressure in the shower is very good. The floor was a bit slippery, but a non-slip mat was provided in the room. Though the website states Lanvin amenities are provided in this room type, Hermes amenities are provided. There is plenty of storage space in the bathroom. Unfortunately, while the bedroom has a night light, there is no corresponding night light in the bathroom. We just left the makeup mirror light on, instead. The photo of the shower was just to show the nice wall design; there is, of course, a rain shower as well.

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  • The guest bathroom, located near the entrance

 

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  • Bath. The non-slip mat was actually located on the ledge, which is behind the closed blind.

 

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  • Main bathroom, which my partner was very fast to claim her side of.

 

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  • Wall feature in the shower. There is, of course, a ceiling-mounted rain shower

 

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  • Hermes amenities

 

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There was no view to speak of. The bannisters outside obscured any view, which is only of the elevated roads that flow to the airport and railway station, anyway.

The cupboard in the main living room includes a yoga mat and two 1kg weights.

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A DVD player is provided, as well as a DVD menu with available DVDs to request. One way the hotel could go the extra distance is to provide cables to connect devices into this technology hub, such as HDMI cables. When we stayed at the Fairmont Nanjing, HDMI cables (among others) were provided in each room, which was great.

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Dining

I apologise, I completely forgot to take photos here. The Club lounge seats maybe fifty people and kind of resembles a library. Most of the couches have these very large teddy bears lounging on them, which is very cute.

We enjoyed the Afternoon tea, served from 3-5pm, which is served on the buffet, and not served to the table like other Sofitels I have stayed at. The selection includes some small sandwiches, desserts and fruit. There was a lot of matcha flavoured desserts, which is not really my cup of tea. Staff are very proactive with topping up drinks.

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  • Some of the offerings at afternoon tea

 

We also enjoyed the Happy Hour, which is from 6-8pm. For photos, you can see tris06's photos in the Elite Experiences 2018 thread, as the selection was pretty much the same when I was there. Hot selections include some meat on a stick (I think it was beef?), some chicken wings, seafood, dumplings, buns, fruit, desserts, cheese, bread and crackers etc. I was quite happy to fill up on this food as my dinner for the evening. Again, staff were very proactive in topping up drinks.

I could not work out how to hyperlink in the Review Writer, this is the link to tris06 Elite Experiences 2018 post, which also has some photos of the lounge itself:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/accorhotels-le-club-accorhotels/1885427-please-post-your-le-club-elite-experiences-2018-master-thread-12.html#post30313042

 

There was a small self-service alcohol station, but the staff were also on hand to pour for you. Spirits and liqueurs included standard white and dark spirits, plus Baileys, Kahlua and some others. I believe there was two reds and two whites, but I did not look too closely in this regard. The staff were very kind to arrange a Baileys and milk for my partner.

As mentioned by tris06, breakfast is not served in the lounge, and so Platinum complimentary breakfast is extended to the main restaurant, where service finishes at 10:30am. For a Sofitel, I was a little underwhelmed with the buffet selection. For some reason, the cheese station was packed down at 9:30am, which was very disappointing. The cooked-to-order noodle soup station had many items empty and took a while to replenish (it wasn’t even busy), plus the chef did not keep track of which order belonged to which guest, he just placed the bowl on the bench and we had to figure out which bowl belonged to which guest. The dessert station, with pancakes and waffles made to order, was very good, and had an ice-cream selection. One weird moment was when both my partner and I got up to go to the buffet at the same time to go and get some noodles, only to return to find some new guests had been seated at our cleaned and reset table.

Facilities

Due to the height restrictions on buildings located near the airport, the hotel is quite long instead. It honestly somewhat resembles a palace, with very high ceilings, rounded windows, large pillars and chandeliers.

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  • A view of the restaurant on level B1 from the balcony in the foyer

 

Unfortunately, we had no opportunity to use the gym or swimming pool, but they looked very good when we stuck our heads in during our post-breakfast digestion walk.

Hotel Wi-Fi was a bit slow, which was a bit disappointing given this hotel would mostly be used by business guests.

Service

We did not interact with many staff during our one-night stay, but every member of staff we did interact with were fantastic.

The lounge staff were especially friendly. When we asked if there were any locations that had access to a power point for laptop charging, the staff provided us with an extension cable without prompt.

Check Out

During check in, we were offered a 4pm late check out, which was fantastic. We actually changed our train to a later time, so we could enjoy the hotel for longer. However, we received a phone call from housekeeping at about 2:45pm enquiring about our departure plans for the afternoon. Apparently our late checkout time was not passed on to them.

The checkout at the Club lounge was quick and efficient.

Overall

If we had an early morning train or flight from Hongqiao, we would return definitely consider staying here again. It was good value for money (we paid RMB 700 for the night, using the 20% discounted flexible rate on the app).

The room was very comfortable, and we did not want to leave. The location is a little inconvenient without metro access and not suited for stays where access to downtown is required, but it was easy enough for us to get a taxi on departure. The staff are true Sofitel ambassadors and every interaction was pleasant.

Sofitel Shanghai Hongqiao

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tris06, Goldorak and Kobetraveller like this.
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Old Nov 27, 2018, 9:31 am
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A very well done review. I see the breakfasts didn't improve at all. Compared to our Sofitel Guangzhou breakfast In the restaurant a few weeks later. Guangzhou Sofitel is miles ahead. Seems your suite was directly on top of ours as we were 732. Great to see the service stays excellent as they really need it to make that hotel busy all year round not just during trade fairs or peak business travel times.
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Old Nov 27, 2018, 11:38 am
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Nice hotel it seems. Thanks for the great review
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Old Jan 13, 2020, 2:44 am
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Just a quick update to this property, as I was scrolling through the ALL website - this property now appears to have Junior Suites, which were not listed when both tris06 and I stayed here last year. So, booking a Luxury Room no longer is an upgrade to a Prestige Suite.
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Old Jan 13, 2020, 2:38 pm
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I am not sure what is "Parisian" about the hotel (to me, Parisian means, first of all, quite tight on space - and certainly not furnished with vaguely "historic" Americanized furniture, unless we're talking of the Westin), but it is indeed really nice. I wish one of the developers of upscale hotels around here had the fantasy and means to erect a palace like that instead of the usual boring postmodern decor.

I apologise in advance for taking photos after we had placed some of my things in the room. I'm still getting used to taking photos immediately upon arrival for the purpose of reviews.
Story of my life - not still getting used to, but taking photos immediately upon arrival. Most of my travelling companions are even learning to play along (to the point of taking photos of their rooms themselves, or helping to arrange luggage and coats to make them invisible in photos). I forgot what it feels to just enter a hotel room and enjoy it
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Old Jan 15, 2020, 7:34 am
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Story of my life - not still getting used to, but taking photos immediately upon arrival. Most of my travelling companions are even learning to play along (to the point of taking photos of their rooms themselves, or helping to arrange luggage and coats to make them invisible in photos). I forgot what it feels to just enter a hotel room and enjoy it [/QUOTE]


We have all been there - OH now deliberately puts stuff or eats welcome gift as soon as we enter room lol

Its ALL a bit of fun, that's why I take so many pictures so at least you ( dear reader ) can get a flavour of the hotel / lounge / room before it has become ephemeral and the moment is lost
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Old Jan 15, 2020, 2:08 pm
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Originally Posted by hotel_user
Story of my life - not still getting used to, but taking photos immediately upon arrival. Most of my travelling companions are even learning to play along (to the point of taking photos of their rooms themselves, or helping to arrange luggage and coats to make them invisible in photos). I forgot what it feels to just enter a hotel room and enjoy it

We have all been there - OH now deliberately puts stuff or eats welcome gift as soon as we enter room lol[/QUOTE]

Take them to Novotel Monte Carlo - the gift is a bar of perfumed soap. They'll be foaming at the mouth!
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Old Jan 15, 2020, 2:10 pm
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Originally Posted by JTCz
We have all been there - OH now deliberately puts stuff or eats welcome gift as soon as we enter room lol
Take them to Novotel Monte Carlo - the gift is a bar of perfumed soap. They'll be foaming at the mouth![/QUOTE]


I quite like the Apples .....
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