Shanghai Andersen Culture Hotel - The Bund

“You get what you pay for”

After reading other reviews, I feared the worse. However, that was not the case. 1. Access - About a 5 minute walk from the Sichuan Road North station on the #5 line. Easy to find on the corner of a huge intersection. 2. Convenience stores - Plenty of those nearby. 3. Check-in - As posted in othe... more

After reading other reviews, I feared the worse. However, that was not the case. 1. Access - About a 5 minute walk from the Sichuan Road North station on the #5 line. Easy to find on the corner of a huge intersection. 2. Convenience stores - Plenty of those nearby. 3. Check-in - As posted in other reviews, the staff were not very "pleasant" by Western standards maybe, but they just seemed to be acting like Chinese to me. Our passports were tossed back to us, but I saw other kinds of tossing or goods and money at other restaurants and shops, so I figured it was just a part of culture. We tried both English and Japanese to no avail, but we really didn't have any questions, so no worries there. 4. The Room - We stayed in room 607. The carpet needed a good vacuuming and definitely needed to be cleaned. There was some graffiti on the wall in the entrance written in pen. The wallpaper was old and needed to be replaced. However, I was expecting this before I got there so it really wasn't a surprise and it wasn't like the room was falling apart. The bathroom was clean. Plenty of amenities. There was a hair dryer, but it wasn't in the bathroom, so think of it as a treasure hunt. Had plenty of hot water. The sheets were clean. The towels were clean, but a little holey. The TV was some kind of pay-per-view HDD thing with no sign of local channels. Although we weren't there to watch TV, it is nice to see local programs sometimes and just have some background noise when getting ready for bed or getting ready in the morning. Overall, it was a pleasant stay. If you expect something, stay at a 5-star hotel. If you just need a decent place to stay, this place will do you fine.

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“Ok for purpose, I wouldn't return though.”

I was staying at this hotel for a period of 6 weeks for a summer school I was attending at a nearby university. The hotel was fit for purpose location wise, near the university, not a far walk from The Bund, short taxi ride to Nanjing Road and around a 7 minute walk to the nearest Metro station (... more

I was staying at this hotel for a period of 6 weeks for a summer school I was attending at a nearby university. The hotel was fit for purpose location wise, near the university, not a far walk from The Bund, short taxi ride to Nanjing Road and around a 7 minute walk to the nearest Metro station (North Sichuan). There were also some nice-ish restaurants in the same road, little convenience stores too. The hotel itself though... First impressions were not great. No one behind the reception desk spoke any kind of English or any language for that matter. I believe it took around half an hour to explain who I was (and why I was here -??). In the end, I was gestured to use Google Translator (this carried on for the entire six weeks) to explain that I just wanted to check in. Eventually I was given a room key card etc. I could only guess where my room was by the number. I had two large suitcases with me and hand luggage and I wasn't offered any help or assistance by anybody to my room (even though there were assistants in the lobby to do so) they just watch me struggle and squeeze into the smallest elevator ever. Eventually I found my room...phew. Not. The key card wouldn't work. Back downstairs again with the cases. I was given the wrong room. The whole palaver again. Eventually I got into my room. The room was tidy, cleanish, quite large, a comfy large bed and the expected modcons. The bathroom was roomy, a large shower and toiletires given and topped up daily with fresh towels etc. The fridge wasn't working in my room. I went down the next day to reception to ask for it to be fixed etc. This was probably more trouble than it was worth. But I saw it as essential to have a working fridge, in a 40c heat and for a duration of 6 weeks. Again, prompted to the Google Translator. I'm not sure if it was the translator or them...but they couldn't understand WHY I wanted the fridge to work. I was actually asked if I wanted it to store clothes in?? Anyway, this actually lasted a week. Everyday, yes it will be fixed. Yes you have a cold fridge now. No I don't. Eventually I was offered a new room (conveniently the room next door). Again, tidy and clean (so I thought - only to discover a used sanitary towel/pad under a bed side table - nobody seemed to care about this at all at reception despite showing them a photo etc). The room however was then fine and I stayed here for the entire six weeks. The AC unit in both rooms was very good and cooled the room down very quick. With the room came breakfast. I think I only went to breakfast around three or four times in my entire stay. There were no cold beverages to offer, only boiling hot water and milk. The website advertised at the time a continental breakfast with fruit etc. Here was just fried rice, noodles, bits of bones and dried vegetables. No fruit to be seen. I suppose their understanding of a continental breakfast was sweet dry bread with a deep fried egg. The lady who cooked the eggs did not understand hand gestures at all. I thought it would be universal that one finger would signify 'one'. Obviously not, I was given two and three on one occasion. The eggs were cooked in a frying pan that looked like it hadn't been washed in about 50 years, it was all charred and burnt bits all over it. There was enough oil in there to feed around 60 people and the eggs were well and truly over cooked. The lady was nice enough etc but shouldn't be cooking eggs. Eventually I decided the breakfast was inedible. I believe at the end of the six weeks, out of the group of 18, only 2 or 3 were actually still having breakfast everyday. To top everything else as well. I know it may be custom in China, but for receptionists, security, lobby assistants cleaners etc to stand around in front of guests and just spit in bins, outside the front of the hotel and into plant pots is just very rude and disgusting. In general, we found the rooms to be OK and a reasonable standard. Cleaners who came round the rooms were nice and pleasant, service on reception was awful and we were treated like something on the bottom of their shoe most of the time and everything always seemed so difficult and hard to do the simplest task. I would stay at this hotel as a last resort as I know what to expect, but there are plenty of others in the local area. Hilton on the Bund for example is very nice with a fantastic roof top bar 'The View'.

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