We just got back from a week vacation in Beijing. We stayed at the Plaza Royale in Beijing. It was maybe a 25-30 minute drive from the airport. First the hotels appearance is awesome. Very classy. Has a definite European touch. It was very clean and business like. They have a morning breakfast buffet that has western items but mostly their cultural choices. For breakfast you get rice, noodles, congee, beans, broccoli, sugar peas, corn..I mean like a lot of thing that Americans would eat for dinner. Now there were some eggs/omelet station, bacon and some days either french toast or pancakes.....that was pretty much it for breakfast choices. I didnt get to go out on the town and walk around outside the hotel because all of our days we had some type of tours booked. There is a WalMart directly behind the hotel. you have to walk all the way around the block to get to it. BUT - I DO NOT RECCOMMEND WALKING IN BEIJING. It is 5x's worse than New York City traffic. There is another grocery store 2 blocks down in the opposite direction, but again, you'd have to walk to get there. Our tour guide told us several times to please be very careful. Look several times before crossing the street , then look some more times then run. He was serious! Pedestrians have no rights.
The hotel has room service and dry cleaning services. Please note that several websites said they have a laundry facility. They dont! After two days of searching for it we used the hotel laundry service (which I do not recommend) After they returned our clothes to us they still didnt smell fresh. There is however a laundry center about 5 minutes from the hotel. They will come get the clothes and bring them back. The clothes had a great Downy scent and it was 75% cheaper than the hotel's laundry service.
The main problem we had at the hotel was communication. To be such a grand hotel no one spoke english after 5pm. NO ONE. They spoke a little here and there but not enough to communicate. One night the weather change caused our room to be freezing cold. We attempted to work the heater in the room but had no luck. We call to the front desk they didnt understand what we were asking for. They sent someone up and they didnt understand either. We pointed to the heater, made cold gestures, the employee just smiled. They came back with blankets. The second night the same problem. This time someone spoke a little better english and told us that they dont cut the heat on until November??? About 20 minutes later someone brought us up a portable heater. Same issue with laundry. Several websites said the hotel had laundry facility, when questioning the front desk one night the lady said no, they only have laundry service. The next night I went down the front desk. The attendant didnt speak english so I pointed to the laundry bag that was also written in Chinese. The attendant said they had a laundry facility downstairs. I go down stairs and there is an attendant by the pool. I point to the laundry bag and she shook her head no and pointed upstairs. I tried to inform her that the upstairs attendant sent me downstairs. She just smiled, bowed, then said she didnt understand...sorry. It got to the point our tour director did all the communications for us. He didnt stay in the hotel though so it was a bit frustrating. -Only frustrating though-. I really cant complain. I am in their country ..ya know what I mean....so that’s it all in all. On a scale of 1-10. they get an 8. The only reason for them not getting a 10 is the language/communication issue. I hope this helps you. I uploaded some pictures also of our room and the front of the hotel.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC