Stayed here over the weekend. A few thoughts:

Check In

Arriving in a cab, we were greeted by the doorman, and then escorted to the front desk by another staff member (the lobby, which is beautiful, is on the fifth floor). The welcome was warm, and we were given an envelope with a card explaining the Virtuoso benefits. We had booked a Superior Room, and via a promo that guaranteed an upgrade, we were given a Deluxe room. We did have an issue with the room we were given: it smelled pretty strongly of cigar smoke. I called down, but as the hotel was full, the only other rooms they had available at the time (we checked in a bit early, around 2:15PM) were on the same (11th) floor. Oddly, while it seems smoking is allowed on this floor only, they don’t designate the rooms as smoking/non-smoking. We were headed to lunch, so it was no problem to wait for another room to become available. The employee had maintenance put an ozone machine into the room while we were gone to try and clear the air, but when we returned a couple of hours later, we could still detect a smell. I went downstairs and the front desk agent apologized profusely and immediately moved us to another room on the 8th floor. That was really the only snag with our stay.

Room

The photos onthe hotel’s siteare accurate. Very comfortable, and the Deluxe was more than large enough for a night’s stay. The bathroom was impressively big and the toiletries were Davi. Everything (lights/temperature/DND) is controlled digitally by a bedside device that looks like it was quite futuristic 20 years ago.

Dining

The Virtuoso benefit covers continental breakfast, and the hotel allows you to apply the value of the continental breakfast to the price of a full breakfast, which I did (my wife went with the continental). Breakfast was fine. Nothing special, but well executed, and room service was impressively fast (it came about ten minutes after I ordered it). We also had lunch at Shanghai Terrace, which was very, very good.

Overall

We were pleased with the value we got for what we paid. The Peninsula is a solid five-star hotel. There wasn’t a ton of *wow* factor (aside, maybe, from the entrance to the lobby), but it’s a great hotel in a great location. The only drawback was that the hotel felt very big. With three restaurants and lots of seating, the lobby was always buzzing with people (not sure if they were all guests or not). You have to take two elevators to get to your room (one from the street to the lobby, walk across the lobby, then another elevator to the room floors). Nobody is going to greet you by name when you walk through the front door (not that we expected that for a hotel of this size, nor does it really matter to us for a stay like this). If hyper-personal service is important to you, you might be disappointed. I’d be happy to return, though next time, barring any promos or massive rate differences, we’ll probably try the Langham to compare.