Scary: Harbin Huasu/Shiju/Ji Feng/Yu Feng/Royal Maple Hotel
Booking at the last minute, some of the hotels I was considering became full. But there was a very highly rated hotel on Ctrip (携程) that was centrally located, so I went for that. It didn’t concern me very much that it wasn’t part of a well-known chain, because I have stayed in some pretty good independent hotels in smaller cities in China, for example the Chengyu Hotel in Meizhou.
This is what the picture of the hotel looked like on the Ctrip app.
Now, arriving at close to midnight, I can’t tell you how scary it was. It looked like I was being dropped off at the set of a horror movie. The building looked shabby, I could kind of make out a neon light with a hotel name on it, but it was flickering, just like in a nightmare. Below is a picture of the building where the hotel is, taken in the day time. It looks much less threatening here, but very different coming into a dark building at midnight.
I think just the three floors painted in green are the hotel. The rest is a commercial building that was dark and deserted at night.
What was especially disconcerting was that the hotel name didn’t match what my booking said. My booking read “哈尔滨中央大街市居酒店” or Harbin Central Street City Hotel, while the sign said Huasu City Hotel.
My keycard said Shiju Hotel.
In the bathroom, the amenity box read Ji Feng Hotel in English.
The towel said Huasu Hotel.
Slippers said 御枫酒店 in Chinese (Yufeng Hotel) and Royal Maple Hotel in English.
Was this a scam hotel??
When I arrived close to midnight, I felt sorry to wake up the staff, who were sleeping on cots in the reception area. They told me that if I cancel my hotel booking on Ctrip, they would give me an upgrade. Why?? It felt even more scammy to me.
This is a picture taken recently from their Ctrip listing. The view looks like that of the ice festival.
Here was my “upgraded room.” The “upgrade” part was the bathtub by the window!
It did have a nice view of the park though.
What was unacceptable, however, was that this was supposedly a nonsmoking room, but there was a heavy smoke smell in the room. They tried to “fix” the situation by coming in at around 1am with air freshener spray, which didn’t really do much obviously. The next morning I said I wanted to check out early: I wanted to find another place to stay my second night in Harbin. To my surprise, there was not early cancellation fee, and they simply refunded my second night.
Writing this now, as of April 2024, it appears the hotel is back to the name Harbin Royal Maple Hotel (哈尔滨御枫酒店) on Ctrip.
