Grand Mercure Jinan Sunshine review

100   Recommended
Room 1915 , Executive Suite
December 6, 2018 by

 Map | 2 Reviews | 50% Recommended
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Grand Mercure Jinan Sunshine
 Map | 2 Reviews | 50% Recommended

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Room 1915

Executive Suite

Liked:
Location
Service
Food
Amenities
Room
Stats
Room
Executive Suite

A little bit of background is necessary. In a previous stay, my credit card was charged DCC by default, which I did not notice until about a week after check out. What followed was a lengthy (almost four weeks) refund process with the hotel, which they had to do through the Bank of China. During the process, the Front Office Manager, Maisie Li, kept following up on my behalf with the bank. After waiting for almost three weeks, I got the GM involved, who replied to me while on vacation and he offered us a complimentary night as compensation for the issue, which we used for a one-night stay. So, the treatment we received during this stay is likely not the ‘norm’ for a regular member coming to stay. That being said, our stays at this hotel have always been decent.

Location

The hotel is located in the western part of Jinan and is convenient if you have business in the area but is not really conveniently located for easy access to the main downtown area. There is a small shopping mall located next to the hotel and some nearby restaurants. I recommend the little Japanese restaurant immediately next door to the hotel.

Jinan has no metro to speak of. It is currently under construction, but likely will not reach this part of town for quite some time. There is buses nearby, but taxis are the main way to get around the city. As a result, peak hour traffic is a nightmare.

There is some construction going on directly opposite the hotel (north side). Only two rooms on each floor directly face the construction, however the noise does carry. The windows do an OK job of blocking of sound, but when the heavy machinery is going, the sound will penetrate into the room with ease.

Check In

Check-in was quick and efficient, as it usually is. Drink vouchers were given without prompt (good only for soft drink, juice, tea and coffee). We were actually given their Executive Suite (top level room) for our complimentary night, which was quite unexpected. The manager on duty said that the GM wanted to catch us for a chat, however was out at the time we checked in (about 8pm), but would meet us for a brief chat at breakfast the next morning.

Room

Upon arrival, there was a fruit plate with a handwritten note from the GM waiting in the room. Some special care had definitely gone into it, as the last time we stayed (also as a Platinum guest) we received a standard fruit bowl. I do not know how long the fruit had been sitting in the room, as the grapes were a tad soft due to the room temperature. The temperature is centrally controlled at this hotel (this is common in China) and has no way to manually change the temperature. We actually turned the air conditioning off for the night (on a night that was about -4C outside.)

Floor Plan.jpg

 

1_Welcome.jpg

The Executive Suite has separate bedroom and living room (each with a TV), with a main bathroom and a guest bathroom. I had advised the hotel of our arrival time in advance, and the bed was already turned down when we arrived. The living room has a sofa and a large working desk. The working desk is large enough for two people to use, if you request a second chair (and the hotel has been very accommodating with this for us in the past). The hotel does supply some input cables, however they are very dated (VGA!) with no HDMI provided. It is very difficult to plug these into the TV anyway, as it is housed in a little cubby. In the Junior Suites, this is not an issue, as the TV is on a swivel stand.

Living 1.jpg

 

Living 2.jpg

 

Desk.jpg

 

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The bed is very comfortable, with a choice of feather pillow and memory foam pillow per person. Each side of the bed has a set of drawers for storage. The closet is large, with ironing board and iron, umbrella and safe. I do not know if profile preferences are visible for Grand Mercures, but my profile asks for extra clothes hangers, which were not provided. As we were only visiting for the one night, this was not an issue this time.

Bed 1.jpg

 

Bed 2.jpg

 

Closet.jpg

 

The guest bathroom has a toilet and sink. It was nice to see towels placed in the guest bathroom. Whenever the room was refreshed in previous stays, there was never towels placed in this bathroom. Even though we would take a towel from the main bathroom to the guest bathroom, housekeeping would replenish the towels in the main bathroom, but not in the guest bathroom, which was a bit annoying. I passed this on in feedback in a previous stay and it was nice to see this taken on board.

Guest Bathroom.jpg

 

The main bathroom has a large stand-alone shower and a bathtub. For some reason, there is no blind for the tinted window between the bedroom and the bathroom. The tinting is nowhere near dark enough and it is easy to see through it - see the photo above in the bedroom discussion. For this reason, we only used the toilet in the guest bathroom (hence my complaint about towels in the previous paragraph in past stays). In past stays, the shower would have a pretty bad ‘drain smell’ following a shower, but we did not notice it on this occasion. Amenities are the standard Grand Mercure branded.

Bath 1.jpg

 

Bath 2.jpg

  • This photo was taken from the other side of the window between the bedroom and bathroom, which does not have a curtain or shade 

 

Bath 3.jpg

Dining

I believe the Executive Lounge at the hotel is closed, however they do seem to use it for events. As a result, platinum-inclusive breakfast is provided in the restaurant. The spread is OK, but nothing to write home about. The cooked vegetables are different each morning and there are the Western ‘staples’, such as bacon, eggs and beans. An omelette station is available. The Executive Lounge happy hour is held in the restaurant and bar on the ground floor, but we did not have a chance to take advantage on this stay.

The GM, Mr. Harmut Schaller, met us on arrival for breakfast and we had a short chat about the issue I had, for which he was very apologetic and understanding (knowing that DCC upcharges are substantial). Obviously, I was satisfied with the manner in which the hotel management had dealt with the issue, so there were no issues there. The rest of the chat was just ‘normal’ chit-chat and Mr. Schaller told me to drop him a line the next time we are in-house.

We did not have the opportunity to dine in during this stay, however I wanted to do a short write-up of the food in previous stays. In October, the hotel was running a special Oktoberfest buffet dinner (besides the GM being German, Shandong province also used to be a German concession), which was very good and well-priced. It was just the standard dinner buffet, but with a special German-theme food section, as well as some special German beer on top. They do this very often, with a special event each month, it seems. We have also dined a-la-carte and can recommend the burger and the lamb cutlets. The beef tenderloin is worth giving a miss. All food is well-priced.

Facilities

The gym is decent, though the equipment is getting a bit dated. Wi-Fi was a decent speed in the room. There is no pool at this property.

Service

There is a high level of service at this hotel. The front desk staff all seem to have a decent command of English, especially the managers. The food and beverage managers also speak good English; I’m not so sure about the F&B attendants, as usually a manager takes our order when we dine in.

Check Out

Due to the complimentary night and no room charges, check out was fast. In previous stays, check out has always been fast. But, if paying with a foreign credit card, please check the credit card payment form to see if DCC method is being used by default!!

Overall

The price is quite good at this hotel (much cheaper than the Sofitel), though suffers due to location. It is more convenient to get to the Jinan West Railway Station (the main high-speed station in Jinan) than the Sofitel.

It works for our purposes, so we continue to stay here. However, the Sofitel is in a much better location if downtown access is required.

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