Shangri-La Hotels in Guangzhou

Great hotel with great amenities, great checkin; however our experience thereafter deteriorated. Once our checkin was completed, we were shown to our room, however our luggage didn’t find its way up. Calling the operator resulted in little to nothing. Calling the reception wasn’t much better either as we were told to wait at least 15-20 mins, despite our already 20 min wait time. Thus I ended going down to grab our luggage myself. The next surprise were the number of towels in the room. We booked a room for 2 adults and 2 kids, however had only 2 full towels. Again calling the operator resulted in little to nothing, likely also to language difficulties. We have since asked 2 staff members for more towels, without any success. Our solution was to grab 2 additional towels from the pool. We only stayed one night, so no biggie. However later the night, our daughter was freezing due to her developing a fever. Thus we called the operator one more time to ask for another blanket; again due to language difficulties we went down to the reception and asked for one more blanket, just in case. We were told ‘no problem’ and housekeeping would bring one. It never came. Having spent the night with a sick kid, we went for breakfast at 9’ish. Though the hotel put up a sign to inform how likely busy the breakfast will be at certain times, we were still surprised to be encounter a waiting line ranging from the elevator to the breakfast room. I have never seen anything the like in similar properties, however one can see why the hotel enforced rather strict entry control measures. The line was handled swiftly, however caused a waiting time to be seated of around 10-15 mins. Breakfast was great, with heaps of choice of both western and Chinese dishes. However the slight chaos caused by guests notably affected staff, which made it sometimes feel more like a train-station cafe, rather than a 5* property breakfast. Upon leaving, we had however the probably best service-moment of our stay. A concierge called Alvin helped us to sort our Didi-issue to travel to Shenzhen and made us truly feel comfortable, despite dealing with an odd Didi driver and a sick kid. Alvin displayed everything you expect in a 5* property and some more! Thus we left exhausted (not the hotel’s fault), but with a smile.