These "no foreigners" rules are actually largely BS; the laws restricting where foreigners can stay were done away with long ago, and any hotel that can register 身份证 holders can also register a foreigner (though whether they know that is another issue entirely).

Sometimes I don't have the energy to fight them on it, but with one exception, every time I have done so I have prevailed in the end. There's a rather excellent guide explaining how to do this over at LostLaowai and explains how to register yourself using the hotel's computers. A few times, I've called the police, who even in the most backwater places have confirmed that absolutely no such law or regulation exists. Success obviously requires solid Mandarin skills. Alternatively, find someone (use your imagination here) to register the room for you.

The vast majority of foreigners won't WANT to stay in one of these kind of places, of course, but if you get off the beaten path, sometimes it's the only option.

Not sure what "star" rating this place has. :p
minimalist industrial decor

https://i1.wp.com/www.lostlaowai.com...3099.jpg?ssl=1

https://i0.wp.com/www.lostlaowai.com...3102.jpg?ssl=1

(For those of us on mobile, those joke jpegs make this thread hard to load but don't add much content.)

Just use their English language sites to book.

I have always found more hotels on elong, especially in remote places, than Ctrip. And elong's prices are often slightly lower.

Agoda is the one I have had more issues with. Hotels have asked me for vouchers when agoda said it was purely a prepaid booking with no voucher necessary (hard to say who is at fault, agoda or the hotel). In all three cases the hotel wanted me to pay and then address it with agoda. I refused, I have other things to spend countless hours of time on. ;)

Just one word of caution, if you are looking to book hotels without regard to earning points and night stays then these OTA bookings are fine. However, if you book through them and not the program's website you generally will not get credit for your stay.

I use Agoda quite a bit, and when I prepay there's always a .pdf attached to the confirming email; open it and it says "Hotel Voucher" at the top. (Sometimes email clients block attachments.)

Ugh. I've used Agoda roughly eighty times, and only once did a hotel - the Mandarin Oriental Manila - force me to email them a voucher upon check-in. Very stuffy hotel anyway.

My failure rate with Agoda is around 5%. It seems that they have no real means to prevent properties from selling their rooms to other people. Of course the same can be said for ctrip and elong, but Agoda's market clout is trivial by comparison.

Before scaring the OP too much, I'd like to state that problems aren't especially common, and I've never once been completely hosed (my worst experience yet was a night in a windowless room)

Is there anyone here from the other side of the front desk? I'd be very interested to know how the different booking sites vary in terms of quality control, assuming there's any control at all.

Over on ebay, for example, a seller whose feedback ratings fall too low is liable to suspension. Do any of the booking sites have a similar policy? Do any of them do any sort of diligence at all to insure descriptions and such are accurate?

In short, do they list just about any place, with no real continuing oversight, or do any of them at least try to keep some sort of standards up? How bad does a place have to be to get kicked off?

My impression is that there's very little if any quality control, but it would be interesting to know if that's true, and if any particular site has a reputation for being more strict.

I believe that merchant processors may have strict excessive chargeback policies and perhaps bans for merchants that face an unnormal rate of credit card chargebacks.

It is common knowledge that OTAs have high charge back rates, but they always seem to figure out ways to stay in business.

This is not really related to the OTA-individual property dynamic 889 was talking about.

I was talking about customer feedback, not chargeback. That is, if too many buyers consistently give a seller low ratings on ebay, the seller will be suspended. Judging by the bad reviews some hotels get time and again, I suspect the booking sites either don't have such a policy or have one that applies to only the very worst cases. But I don't know, hence the question.

Personally I'd prefer that they keep the awful hotels in their system and let users decide whether or not to endure. Reasoning: in certain parts of China, I want to at least have the option to stay as close to the client/supplier/factory as humanly possible. I am fully aware that the hotel next door may be close to unbearable, but I want to know that it exists.