Royal Century Hotel Shanghai

Stay was good.

The location was not good.

The hotel is beautifully presented, it’s in a nice and quiet neighbourhood and away from all the tourist attractions. The curtains did an amazing job to black out the morning sunlight. The rooms are large and clean. The evening food here is really good. As mentioned in a lot of reviews, the Indian chef is amazing. My partner says it’s the best curry he’s ever had.

Be aware, the gym is separate from the hotel but guests can use it for free. It’s really busy, hard to communicate and we were charged £40 to swim as we needed to buy a hat and goggles. I was hoping to relax in the spa, like other hotels that promote their spa facilities but alas, not here. The air conditioning does not work, it’s on but the temperate of it does not change. The bedding is thick so it’s uncomfortably hot overnight and made for a terrible nights sleep (for 4 nights). Something a bit odd, this hotel talks a lot about protecting your privacy if the “do not disturb” light is on. However, we left this on when we went out for the day and came back to a note saying that they noticed the do not disturb was on after 14:00 and came in to clean anyway. This was fine, but we hadn’t secured things like our passport etc for the day as we expected no one to go in... peculiar based on the messages about privacy when we arrived. The free shuttle doesn’t nearly do as many drop-offs as needed but is probably good if you don’t mind being really early. This hotel was as expensive as one on the Bund when we booked but had a bigger room and is only 40mins away from the centre. However, based on the negatives above I think the one on the Bund would have offered better value for money.