ps9a

Agreed on the poor cousin... stayed there last fall, after staying at the Peninsulas in HKG and BKK... not close. Service was still excellent, though, and the breakfast was awesome. Just needs a little renovation...

Ozchinois

"2. Hotness of staff - I mean, if you're into 40 year old chicks that know their crap - maybe Ritz, but if you like young hotness then Pen for sure. The guys are properly primped too.
3. Room Comfort - Ritz
4. Ability to make reservations - Pen - got reservations to every club every night
5. Pen staff can tell jokes in English and Mandarin. They also will help in the effort of locating hot women. "

I now know which hotel to avoid in Beijing, The Pen.

aa4ever

With the caveat that the only hotel I've ever stayed at was the Peninsula (and it was in mid 2007 before the new crop of hotels in Beijing opened), here's what I'd say to your opinions. FYI, I thought it was an absolutely terrible hotel, but I'll try not to be biased.

Decor: I didn't like staying in what amounted to a shopping mall. To each their own, though.
Hotness of staff: I have yet to rank a hotel on this, and I honestly don't remember.
Room comfort: mediocre. It was small and not especially well services.
Reservation ability: abysmal. They managed to screw up >50% of our reservations, including restaurants, cars with driver, airport transfers, as well as a mild mistake on plane tickets.
Amenities: mediocre. Tried to charge us for additional bottled water, for example.
Dress: don't really remember.
Bed: pretty awful.
View: none to speak of.
ball[er] status: I suppose when there's no competition, the Pen has it.

As you can see, I thought it was a pretty mediocre hotel. If/When I'm next in Beijing, I will certainly be somewhere else. The one thing I will give them, however, is that the location is excellent.

Also, in regards to the Shanghai FS: perhaps not the greatest hotel in the world, but certainly one of the best in mainland China. It was the only place I stayed in that actually had quite good (excellent at times) service.

doclkk

Why?

I mean, if you're into men, I think the Pen will tell you to head to the club destination.

What's wrong with the pen?

Kagehitokiri

i have a hard time believing you are not trolling, but...

this is the luxury hotels forum, not the hotels with "cool & attractive staff" forum.

paul2

Aw Kage, don't you know that 'hotness' is an important subject at Cornell ?

doclkk

Yea - but having cool and attractive staff makes the hotel all the nicer. I already gave the run down of how I rate hotels. It's not all of it, but its a detail that's important.

As an example of this. Look at Ocean's 13 (yes, I know its a hollywood movie ... but they make a good point) - Pacino's character had models that serve food. Luxury hotel - now why do you think that is?

eboy1983

is there a four season in Beijing???

dano18

The Pen is the only place I've stayed in Beijing and I would NOT stay there again. We had less than 24 hours in Beijing and they managed to really screw it up. We had arranged for a car to pick us up at the airport and take us to the wall at Mutianyu. The car failed to show so we wasted 2 hours at the airport. Finally the house car ( a nice 7 series BMW) showed up to take us to the hotel where we had to arrange another trip to the wall resulting in another waste of almost 3 hours. We got to spend about 40 minutes at the wall.

Upon returning to the Pen they had no record of our dinner reservation, not that we needed one, but annoying, especially after our day of frustration.
All arrangements had been through Andrew Harper. We presented our hard copy of reservations but still nothing.

The lobby is nice but the rooms are small and subpar. Ours was so hot we slept with the window opened even though it was 20 degrees F, outside. The bathroom looked like a motel 6.

The hotel has great cars (2 Bentley's and the 7 series BMW), a great location on Goldfish Road. But the best thing about the hotel was they packed us a really nice breakfast box to take to the airport for our pre-dawn flight.

This Pen is nothing like it's sister properties in Shanghai, Tokyo, HK, Bangkok or Chicago.

Next time I will book elsewhere.

dan

Kagehitokiri

what do you mean by this - is it possible that andrew harper did not send anything to hotel?

i had an SLH stay where they only sent rate ($) and bed type to hotel the day before i arrived. they did not send room, package, flight info. and waiting until the day before could have led to no room being available.

dano18

Could AH have dropped the ball? Perhaps, except the concierge knew of our early morning departure, knew we requested an English speaking driver in a luxury car and the price that was quoted...so I would say it was the hotel's fault.

At dinner that night the concierge came over to apologize again. He was stunned that the restaurant was unaware of our dinner reservation...or so he said. Of course he apologized again.

Yes the bathroom was really small and the caulking around the showe/tub (not separate) was sloppy and the tiles were cracked. Not a huge deal but certainly not like any other Pen I've seen.

At least the bed was great.
d

Kagehitokiri

odd the apology came from concierge, and that it was for dinner reservation, while the initial transfer was the real service failure.
totally forgot about that in previous post. that means the below was a good post.

moondog

It is difficult to take your opinions seriously in light of the fact that your second favorite hotel in BJ doesn't exist.

Fliar

It is difficult to take the OP's opinions seriously period

moondog

Since you bumped this thread (not sure why, but no fault of yours) again today, I decided to reread it and have determined that it is completely insane.