Hongkun International Hotel was said a "five stars" hotel. This is rating by China Country themselves. Along with my experience it only worth international " 3 stars" services. I am stay in this hotel in 7 nights with my tours group. I felt the hotel room is enough big for the "5 star" hotel room size. But the service was bad than no star hotel. And the room always have the bad smiling and the path way as well. I think overview China's hotel service still behind the world's same level hotel still have a far away way standards. Of course I can understand why this hotel's service like this? Because I have been talk with some staff who was currently work in this hotel. They came wtih the old owner - who never put in management for this hotel and always gave a very poor salary for this hotel staff. So no one was attractive to hard work for this hotel. And this hotel's name is : International Hotel. But in the receiption no one can speak English. If this hotel not already to provided international standard service, please don't take the international tours stay in this hotel. This is this hotel very poor management area!

I am not the first time to China for holiday. I have been to many area in China. I am very understand what is "5 star" hotel means in China. But I hope this hotel can improvement through this time.

Stay in Beijing 10 days. Overall I still feel very happy for this tour. I will come back again in Beijing. But I will choice the hotel by myself. Actually there are many good service and reasonable hotel around beijing.

I stayed 7 nights in this Hotel with an impressive lobby. The room I was given was spacious, clean with very comfortable beds. Most importantly it smelt fresh as windows could not be opened. However both of my friends were not so lucky with their room. When I visited their room (3 floors below mine), it smelt stale, the carpet and mirror were stained and appeared worn out, and the cups were not washed properly. Their room looked tired and worn out needing refurbishment.
Even though I had paid single supplement and was given a double bedded room, I would have expected to be given a room in a quiet location. Although the outside view from room is scenic being quite high up, unfortunately all my sleeping nights had not been restful. A Digger could be heard digging and shifting soil nightly till 5am. To have to put on a pair of ear plugs to block out continuous noise generated by a JCB Digger is rather ridiculous especially when one is on holiday!
I was lucky enough to encounter the one and only English speaking Receptionist and naturally I knew who to approach if I needed service. "Smiling goes a long way" towards getting the attention required at the Reception desk. For a International Hotel, management should think seriously about training more of their staff to speak English.....being an international language.
Be warned about breakfast if you are travelling in a Group Tour. I have never seen anything like it at breakfast. It was a harrowing experience and I had never encountered so much chaos with regards to the sea of people trying to get their food as well as seats. Some had to stand eating or had to take their breakfast to the Lobby so they could sit down. To be fair it may not be so chaotic if the Hotel is not having to cater for Tour Groups.

Overall my stay at this hotel would have been been more enjoyable if it had not been the nightly noise and the chaotic breakfast time experienced.

I stayed at this hotel from Oct 13 to 20 as part of a group tour. External view was impressive for a 22-storey hotel, likewise for its lobby which has good waiting/seating . It has 2 restaurants on the 1st floor (which I did not patronise ) but were told by other travellers they were ok. All staff i.e. receptionists/switchboard operators/waiters, etc only spoke mandarin.

I was impressed by the size of the room, 2 double beds (comfortable), large ensuite with separate shower and bathtub (some bits need re-grouting), proper wooden clotheshanger,, bathrobes. Soap/shampoo/conditioner, etc were provided. On closer observation, carpets/skirting boards have accumulated dust and even on room cleaning days, never heard a vacuum cleaner in use. Perhaps only when guests check out?? Some friends complain of dripping water from ceiling, some toilets hard to flush and main doors not closing properly.

It was terrible to learn that there's no airconditioning but only cooling as aircon wont be allowed if temperature for the day does not exceed 25C (we were informed that it's national conformation ??) And the bar-fridge is also on 'cooling', This, I can't figure out either. Cups and kettle provided, internet usage is restricted as many group travellers encounter delays and whatnots. I have resorted to ring overseas rather than the reverse cause the operator can't speak English and how will she put a call through ?? And on this matter, communication between front desk staff and housekeeping/switchboard are terrible. I was passed back and forth almost 5 times before I could dial IDD./there's NO weighing scale in the whole hotel (to check luggage weight).

On the first evening, we witnessed some protest by a contract company (about a dozen workers) which claimed unpaid jobs by the hotel owners. They occupied the whole lobby seats, had boxed dinner there, strewn food/drinks on the floor and talked very loudly.....definitely planned to upset trading. This happened again a few nights later.and we were told it was an ongoing dispute for more than a year and the hotel can't do anything about it.

There were 5 groups of average 40 people in each group sent to this hotel. The hotel was definitely not equipped to handle such vast traffic which reflected in the understaffed kitchen and quick rush for breakfast each day. The message I get is that the new owners wanted to 're-train' staff for better service (which is good) to upkeep a 5 star hotel listing (English speaking staff would be a start). It could be done but before that a huge refurbishment will need to be undertaken cause internally, it's looking very tired indeed.. If not for the fact that it's on a promotional cheap tour, I would not return unless they clean up their act.

Best bit is across the road you can find many tea shops. Behind the hotel there's a very clean Japanese fastfood outlet called Yoshinogaya (unsure of spelling) and they serve up delicious Japanese ricebowls /set lunch at very reasonable prices. Also next door there's a provision shop selling bottled drinks and the usual snacks but beware and check useby dates for fresh breadrolls.

We checked into this "5-star" hotel as a group of more than 30 from mostly Canada and the US. My wife and I were the first in line at the front desk and gave them our passports for registering and copying to send to government office. The clerk kept piling passports from people behind us on our passports and she kept taking the passport on top for processing and copying so that our passports stayed at the bottom un-processed. I kept telling the clerk doing the processing and copying in Mandarin that this was not right and we should not be kept waiting. I was only 6 feet away and the clerk just ignored me. In the mean time there was constant interruption from guests who checked in earlier demanding for room change because the air conditioning in their room was "not working". So some of the staff had to be diverted to re-process these guests. ( We later found out that by city ordinance hotels in Beijing were not allowed to turn on air conditioning until around mid May. I suppose the front desk staff kept switching rooms for these guests because they did not want us to know that our rooms would also be hot.) I asked to see the manager for the front desk but she pretended to be very busy and ignored me as well. We finally got processed and checked into our room after more than half an hour. Needless to say the room was very hot. A call to the front desk resulted in a "technician" visit. The tecnician informed us that the air condition control was "probably" not operational and told us to crank open the vent under the window. As expected this did not work and after several more calls somebody finally told us about the city energy-saving ordinance. So we had no choice but to suffer with the rest of the guests.

On a separate day we went down to the lobby with some friends preparing to go out to do some shopping. My wife asked the front desk in English for a city map and got one. Since I was going with some other friends to a different area to shop I went to the same desk and asked for a map as well in Mandarin but was told that there were no more maps. After a while another friend went up and asked for the same map in English and promptly got one from the same female clerk that told me all maps were given out. I was quite incensed and complained to a manager, brought him to the female clerk involved and told them off in both Mandarin and English. The manager apologised and quickly found his "personal" map and gave it to me. I was later told by many people, including tour guides, that this is quite common. Most Chinese, at least those in the service industry, still kow-tow to "foreigners" and unless they get shouted at they have a tendency to ignore or give poor service to their own countrymen. This is sad and unacceptable. I spoke to these people in Mandarin out of respect for them and also because I was proud to be back on Chinese soil, having lived in North America for over 40 years.

On a slightly different note, even taking out the service component, Hungkun International was barely a 3-star hotel in my view. There were no doormen most of the time and the facility was also inadequately maintained, with sub-standard patch-up repairs in the bathrooms and common areas. The carpet in our room was unbearably filthy with hair balls abundant. The previous guest's fruit snack remnants were still sitting on the night table. I asked for a re-vacuum and got a quick 2-minute job that picked up at best 30% of the visible.dirt. The cleaning maid clearly thought I was too fussy and could not understand why I directed her to do the vacuumng and clean up.The breakfast service was also very inadequate and was not equiped to handle all the quests appropriately and effeciently.

I left my comments on the form provided with the front desk manager and have not heard any acknowledgement so far.

I strongly recommend potential hotel seekers to stay AWAY from this hotel which has no ideas on how to run a hotel business.