Originally Posted by Thunderroad (Post 16931002)

Great and useful review, starpoint!

Originally Posted by kingsubbu (Post 16931245)

Terrific review, thanks. This is definitely on our list of must-visit properties (and places).

Originally Posted by hardeight44 (Post 15955499)

I'm thinking about doing Sept trip. Can you please report back your success with the Visa?

Originally Posted by camsean (Post 16934614)

The hotel sounds great, but i'm not sure about visiting an occupied Tibet.

Originally Posted by l'etoile (Post 17278941)

Thanks for the report eternalX.

I'll be there in about a week, spending my first two nights at a sister property of Shambhala Palace - The House of Shambhala. As of last year anyway, both were owned by an American. http://www.time.com/time/travel/arti...002141,00.html They're part of the Red Capital Club properties, which I've found pretty interesting.

Moving on to several nights at the St. Regis after that. I'll keep my expectations in check!

Originally Posted by eternalX (Post 17116013)

Isn't the minimum fee for Bhutan $10k?...

Originally Posted by l'etoile (Post 16943208)

I assume you mean the permit to visit Tibet and not the separate visa for China.

In my research for my own trip I found the closer your travel agent's location to Tibet, the cost for the permit and required guide tend to go down significantly. A travel agency based in Tibet with an office in Beijing was recommended to me. They were much less expensive than the rate quoted by the St. Regis for the required guide (500 yuan through St. Regis per day for the guide and 200 yuan per day for the guide referred to me by someone in Tibet). While price isn't what I'd base by decision on, the Tibetan service came highly recommended.

Originally Posted by chazas (Post 18416877)

This property is not anywhere close to St. Regis standards. Service is friendly but mostly untrained and ineffectual. Whenever we passed through the lobby, there were ten or more staff members just hanging out, all of whom would jump up and say hello, expecting to be responded to. We met our "personal butler" on the first day, but never saw him again - we had a different person respond to requests every time.

I am SPG Gold, and booked with cash and points before the recent increase in award levels, so it was a very good value. I had asked several times before we checked in if it might be possible to upgrade, either with cash or additional points, to a Potala-view room. I was told that early April was high season, and that these rooms (only one category up from the base level) were full.

The first room we were placed in was supposedly an "upgrade" but was on the first floor of the muddy courtyard, in a separate building with freezing first floor hallway. We were were told it had a "lake" view but the only view was of mud, water spigots and the unsigned pathways to the "spa" (no gym, sauna or steam room). There was no privacy whatsoever, and there were several obviously broken items in the room, including a big chunk of stone broken off the interior step and room shades that did not work. According to the manager, they actually charge more for this room, though I don't know how - we declined the room and asked for a room from our original room category. Magically, at that point a Potala-view room appeared. After a couple of days, it became clear that occupancy was extremely low. Whole wings of the hotel must have been shuttered.

The hotel was poorly designed and constructed, and is not being maintained (or even cleaned) well. Basically, it is falling apart. Food is just ok, which by Lhasa standards probably translates to "pretty good."

There is a Western gentleman from management who often posts in response to Tripadvisor reviews. He is a very nice chap, but clearly is not empowered to do anything to truly make the experience significantly better. That would take a large investment in training and facilities, which I doubt is forthcoming.

There may not be a better place to stay in Lhasa, but be forewarned.

Originally Posted by starpoint_galaxy (Post 16908137)

We checked into the St. Regis Lhasa on August 8th and will check out tomorrow, the 13th of August. Our stay was a five day vacation using 5 of our 17 Free Resort Nights (FRNs) benefits from the recent Starwood "Stay Three Getaway Free" promotion. In summary, we experienced some of the best service quality (if not the best) here than we have experienced at any other Starwood property.

Currently, it is not easy to plan a trip to Tibet because you have to get a Tibet Travel Permit (after you get your China visa) and the dates must match your travel details exactly. In addition, now is the peak season for Tibet, and it can be quite hard to align the dates of the Tibet Travel Permit with the airfare (we flew from Bangkok to Chengdu, stayed at the Sheraton Lido Chengdu there a few days) and the hotel reservations. Having said that, we received excellent service from the management team at the St. Regis Lhasa who, without their help, we would cancelled the trip because of problems with permits and also with return air fare.

When arrived at the hotel by private car from the Lhasa airport and were well taken care of. The management team met us upon arrival, including the very passionate about Tibet GM (Mr. Magdy Anis), with a warm traditional Tibet welcoming ceremony. The GM gave us a very enjoyable tour of the facilities before handing over the remainder of the tour to our personal butler, whom we owe our gratitude for such great trip.

Our St. Regis Lhasa personal butler was Chief Butler Billy Yang, who was outstanding in every possible way. We have never experienced such great service, warm friendly, caring, helpful, attentive but not intrusive; in short, the service from Billy was unsurpassed in our Starwood travels, including other St. Regis properties.

We were assigned one of the most beautiful suites we have ever stayed in which was very spacious, modern, well equipped and very comfortable with an unsurpassed view of the Potala Palace. The room was nearly perfect in every way and with such an outstanding quality of service, we enjoyed every day to the fullest.

Every detail was managed perfectly by the staff, all orchestrated by our amazing Chief Butler, whom we felt more like a family member soon after meeting him. We were escorted to breakfast, evening cocktails and just about every step of our journey was managed perfectly by Billy. We have never experienced anything like this at any property anywhere in the world. People tend to rave about the service in Thailand; let me tell you, the service we received at the St. Regis Lhasa far exceeded the best of the best in Thailand (and we have stayed at just about every property there hundreds of nights, including SGS, WGS and the new St. Regis Bangkok.)

Every coin has two sides, and so there is some room for improvement from our perspective; but I don't think our ideas will reflect most guests desires because we are very active (non-smoking, fitness training and scuba diving travelers) and for some reason, we did not experience any problems with altitude sickness as many travelers seem to when they ascend rapidly to 3500 meters. Oxygen was in the rooms if we needed it, but we did not need it; nor did we need any medication for altitude sickness. We felt great the entire trip.

So, for that reason, we were a bit disappointed that were was no fitness center, table tennis (ping pong) or billiard room; or similar activity to enjoy on the St. Regis property. We toured the local area one day out of the six we were there as we have seen many temples, palaces and lakes in our lifetime; so we prefer activity on the property in addition to outside guided tours. Hence, we would have loved to also have had access to a fitness center or game room; because we need and enjoy exercise and other resort activities even in high altitude places.

The management and staff constantly kindly reminded us to "take it easy" because of the altitude; but honestly, climbing hundreds of steps at Potala Palace (highly recommended by the resort team) exerts more energy than weight and resistant training in a resort fitness center. Our feeling was that the St. Regis Lhasa needs more "on property" activities; but others who want to tour every day may not have this feeling at all. There is a beautiful "golden swimming pool" which we really liked so much; you must try this pool!

Overall, we loved the St. Regis Lhasa and accomplished our goals of visiting Tibet and staying at a luxury Starwood resort using some of our FRNs. The service quality is unsurpassed thanks to the kind attention by Chief Butler Billy Yang and the management team lead by GM, Magdy Anis. We highly recommend this property if you like amazing service, superior Platinum recognition and the idea of touring Lhasa, Tibet and the surrounding area.

In closing this brief SW FRN report, we would like thank Starwood for such a great "Stay Three Getaway Free" promotion, because we probably would not have visited Tibet in our lifetime; but we decided that five free resort nights at the St. Regis Lhasa would be a nice change, and indeed it was. In addition, we will never forget the kind attention to our travels by the GM and Chief Butler, and indeed the entire team, at the St. Regis Lhasa.

Both the suite we were upgraded to, and the service quality and Platinum recognition, was among the best (if not THE BEST) we have experienced in hundreds of stays at Starwood properties worldwide.

Thank You Starwood and Thank You St. Regis Lhasa!

Originally Posted by starpoint_galaxy (Post 18437748)

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. I am not doubting your words or experience; however, I was there not long ago and experienced some of the best service I've even seen in a SW property: