Laurence Luk

Review of Shangri-la Hotel Qingdao

Overall our experience with the hotel is great - f...

Overall our experience with the hotel is great - facilities, staff, food, restaurants especially the music night at the lobby lounge and the good service and food at the Summer Palace Chinese restaurant.

The only thing which unfortunately came as a very bad experience was the 3rd night during our stay when we got off from taxi at the main entrance of the hotel. We went back to hotel after dinner by taxi, and when we arrived there was no way the taxi could get close to the entrance, because of construction work. There was absolutely no sign for both cars or pedestrians how to get in. We were forced to get off the taxi in the middle of the road, and the construction trucks were huge and moving so quickly and almost hit on us. We jumped to the back of the taxi to avoid being hit, at the same time stopped the taxi from leaving. It was very dangerous because of the big trucks moving around, the traffic on the road with other cars, and the darkness of the entrance area. During our move we even inevitably stepped onto the area with wet wax (bitumen). Our shoes became sticky and dirty and later after we went back we realized there was no way to clean it and had to throw them away. At the end, we managed to get back onto the same taxi, forced the taxi driver to go around the hotel and finally stopped somewhere that we saw a pavement and we had to then walk back.

We were quite disappointed at how an international 5-star hotel did not give any notice to its customers that there would be major construction work that impact them on going out/getting back to hotel. Also, there should be at least clear sign to tell taxi/customers on how to go to alternative entrance if the main one is blocked. At minimum there could be someone who could have instructed the traffic there, instead of having ourselves almost got hit by truck with our shoes all becoming messy and could just be screaming there. It eventually became quite a scary night for us and we did spend a great deal of time to settle and wash ourselves after getting back to our room.