Xitang Oude Stad

Beautiful hotel and grounds. Shuttle was not always free, and hours are limited if you don’t reserve in advance. Disney shuttle times and breakfast opening time make it difficult to have included breakfast and use shuttle. (Breakfast starts at 7. Disney shuttles are at 630 and 730am) and they stop at another hotel so it’s an hour shuttle. We ended up using DiDi to/from Disney. I chose this hotel largely because they had 24-hour shuttle but I found they could schedule a taxi or driver 24-hours with notice which most hotels can do, so I would not choose specifically for this service. However, it really is a beautiful hotel if you don’t fully count on free shuttle. Also I had to show my reservation confirmation that I had booked room with breakfast, as they were trying to charge me for breakfast. It was quickly rectified.

The hotel is very nice. However, the experience was let down by some of the staff. On arrival, the bell boy was most helpful with unloading our bags. However, the reception lady was clueless. Even though she quickly found my prepaid booking in the system, she went through screen after screen, clicking away merrily without explaining what she was doing. There were two other staff who walked by from time to time, looked over her shoulder and then walked away. A queue of guests behind us grew impatient. It took over 20 minutes before she finally gave us our room key, but without even a word of explanation of why it took her so long. The room was nice and tasteful, and the furnishing was top quality. We visted the spa/onsen. The reception lady asked us to leave our mobile phones in individual lockers and gave us each a number tag. However, the number tag did not match the locker number! On leaving the spa, she asked us to hand back the number tag before opening the phone lockers, Not surprisingly, the wrong lockers were opened and were empty. At first, she insisted that these are the correct lockers, and showed us the number on the key tags as proof. After a fashion, we persuaded her to open the phone lockers that we had actually deposited our phones. Bingo, our phones were sitting inside these! The breakfast buffet was below par. The cooked food was barely warm. It took a while before cutleries were provided after asking. Why aren't these available at a hotel buffet???

Property wise the hotel and staff were great for transit accommodation. The main problem was getting to the hotel from the airport using the shuttle bus. The hotel provided English speaking line never answer and the Mandarin one does not speak any English so good luck getting to the hotel. It took us 1.5 hours to get hold of the driver