Was this Hilton hotel a decent bet?
We had a four-day stay in Shanghai, and we chose a mid-tier Western brand as we didn’t know the local market. We travelled to Shanghai via Emirates, flying in their First Class cabin on the A380 from Manchester to Dubai, then business class on a 777 for the final leg. It was a long trip, with some heavy-duty jet lag, so we were hopeful that our hotel choice was comfortable and quiet.
Where is the Conrad?
It’s located in a sixty-six-story building that opened in 2022. That building also houses an upscale mall, and at ground level, there is a popular M&Ms store, a Sephora and a Starbucks Reserve.
The built-in mall is decent; it’s spread over eight floors and is something of a rabbit warren. We went there a few times, and I still don’t feel like we saw everything, or even understood how we got from one place to another.
There’s a good selection of shops, as well as a dog and a cat cafe. They’re actually located next to each other, and they are connected. On our visit both sets of natural enemies seemed to co-exist absolutely fine. There was also an Alpaca in the corner of the dog cafe. In a lot of ways, that sums up the quirky nature of Shanghai.
The famous Nanjing Road is a mere thirty steps from the front of the hotel. This street, which stretches for miles, has an endless number of shops and eateries. This road gets extremely busy during peak hours, and it is somewhat mindblowing. It made the Vegas strip feel like a village church.
The Conrad is a big hotel with 728 rooms. Whilst you might need to wait a minute or two for a lift, it never felt overly busy. There is a very friendly lift attendant, based on the check-in floor, who can speed things up and also have a great conversation. Some staff did struggle with English, but others were perfectly fluent and extremely friendly.
Checking in at the Conrad
You check in to the Conrad on the eleventh floor. A porter took our luggage from the taxi and carried the bags to the bank of lifts that got us to the check-in area. There are multiple sets of lifts in this hotel, some of which will take you directly up to the rooms, whilst others go just to the check-in area.
We were checking in around 5pm, and whilst there was no queue, the process took around five minutes. I’m unsure why it was so slow. There was a lot of discussion, and typing, and eventually we had our keys.
I’ve said it in previous reviews, there is no reason why any hotel check-in process should be slow. When you’ve just landed after 20 hours of travelling, it’s really frustrating.
The Room
We stayed in a City View suite on the 49th Floor. The room had a single bathroom with a separate shower, a fully enclosed toilet room, and a reasonably sized living room and bedroom.
The views from the room were incredible. I watched the sun come up over the city on our second day as I was battling jet lag, and I sat there working at the desk, watching Shanghai come alive.
The suite came with executive club access, more on this later in the review.
The total cost for the stay was £831.48 for three nights, so just over £275 a night. For a suite in a big city, this felt reasonable, and we earned just over 16,000 Avios on the booking via Avios Hotels.
We booked the hotel when Avios was running a 20 points per £ promotion. The standard rate is 15, which is still very generous, and we used an Amex card to pick up an additional 1.5 points per £.
The suite includes a mini-bar, which you have to pay for, but you do get coffee and tea for free. Since you also get free access to the executive lounge, and you can get coffee and tea at any time of day, it really doesn’t make sense to make it in the room.
The Bedroom
This was my favourite room in the suite. It’s a very easy room to sleep in, with full blackout curtains, plenty of space, a large TV, and all the power sockets you need located on each side of the bed.
You can access the bedroom via the living room, but also the hallway that goes from the front door into that room. You only have a single bathroom in this hotel
The Bathroom
The Conrad bathroom ticks a lot of boxes. It has a large bath, an equally spacious shower, plus dual sinks and a separate toilet. What doesn’t work is how close everything is together, and the layout.
There’s also an amenity counter with its own mirror and a hairdryer, plus there’s a dual-sided mirror that caters to the two basins that sit on either side of it.
It’s not a bad bathroom, it’s just an awkward space for even one person, never mind two. At least the shower is large, with the amenities provided by
The toilet is a Japanese-style one, complete with a control panel
Food and drink at The Conrad
There are a few different places to eat at the hotel:
- The excellent executive lounge on the 44th floor.
- Lane 11, which is the main breakfast restaurant. It also serves lunch and dinner on the 11th floor.
- Asador, a Mediterranean restaurant with outside seating, is also on the 11th floor.
- The Copper Bistro is a coffee shop that serves hot food, located on the ground floor.
The hotel also has 24-hour room service, which we used on the night we arrived. The service was quick and the food was perfectly passable.
There are a thousand food options within walking distance of the hotel, from Western to local. You will not go hungry, no matter what you’re looking for.
As you walk from the hotel to Nanjing Road, there’s a robot barista. Most mornings, I was getting up so early that there were no coffee shops open, so I would head here and get a pretty decent latte for the grand sum of £1.
A little further down Nanjing Road, there’s a rather unique ice cream vendor. They sell dog-shaped ice creams that look a little too lifelike. They’re also delicious.
The facilities
The hotel has a large indoor pool on the eleventh floor, next to the Spa. You access it via the Spa reception on the 10th floor, and it’s open from 6am up to 11pm.
There’s a large gym with a good range of equipment. I ended up burning off my jet lag in here in the early hours. It’s open 24 hours, but outside of normal working hours, you access it via the 11th floor via an unmarked door. I had to ask reception how to use it, as the signs will take you into the gym via the Spa, on the 10th floor.
The gym faces onto the same veranda that the Asador restaurant uses, and there are double-height windows facing the city. If you time it right (i.e. around 5am) you’ll get to see the sun come up while you train.
What wasn’t great about this hotel?
The bathroom was a pain point for us. On paper it has everything you need, but it’s bizarre layout meant you were knocking into each other, or objects. Getting through it late at night, to use the toilet, wasn’t easy. It also had the most miserly collection of towels I’ve seen in a non-budget hotel.
There are also a lot of lights. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s also a wide selection of buttons to operate them. Four days in, and we were still non the wiser on how to operate them properly.
And one final quirk with the lights – when you leave the room, the bedroom lights turn on. That means when I snuck out in the early hours to go to the gym, I woke my wife up. Just to be clear, I didn’t press any buttons; the lights just chose to come on when the room door was opened.
Wifi and connectivity
The hotel has free wifi throughout, but it’s heavily restricted. On top of the national restrictions (Google is not accessible in China), I was not able to connect to a VPN. This was frustrating from a security perspective. I was able to use an e-SIM to connect my mobile device.
The speed, for the sites that worked, was reasonable but not hugely fast. I was getting around 23mb/s.
The Executive lounge
The lounge is on the 42nd floor and is open from 6:30am to 11pm.
Breakfast is served from 6:30am to 10:30am (you can also use the Lane 11 restaurant for breakfast, located on the eleventh floor, the same floor as check-in). Afternoon tea is served from 2:30pm to 4:30pm, and Dinner (which they call happy hour) is from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. Outside of these times, you can help yourself to tea, coffee and soft drinks.
The dress code is no shorts, no leggings and no casual footwear. I’m unsure what the latter means, but as we were on holiday, I was able to gain access wearing both shorts and casual footwear.
If you’re staying in a room that gives you access to the exec lounge, there are other perks. You can get two hours of complimentary access to a meeting room and get up to five A4 pages printed out. These are invaluable on romantic trips with a partner.
I really liked this lounge. It’s an attractive space with triple-height ceilings and stunning views across the city. It’s nicely decorated, and due to the size of the room and the generous spacing out of the tables, it has a serene, almost library-like feel.
What we thought
Some third-party reviews were negative towards this space, particularly the food. Our experience was wholly positive. This is not a Michelin-starred restaurant; it’s an executive lounge that offers a quick, easy, and free food option. The range and quality of food make this lounge one of my all-time favourites. I’m not too sure why some reviewers had such an unfavourable opinion of it.
- Breakfast had the widest variety of options, with table-service hot drinks and a live cooking station.
- Afternoon tea was a simple table service platter of beautiful, small dishes.
- Dinner (or, as they call it, Happy Hour) offered ten different hot options, along with salads. The live cooking station was also open.
The service from staff members is exceptional, and they are all extremely friendly.
What’s around the hotel?
The Conrad is very well located. Aside from the proximity to Nanjing Road, it’s a five-minute walk to the nearest metro station (which itself has shops and restaurants inside). We found it incredibly easy to get around the city, and that was aided by fantastic public transport. Just make sure you have a local payments platform installed on your mobile phone. We used AliPay.
The main international airport (Shanghai Pudong) is around forty-five minutes away by taxi. I believe it’s possible to get there faster via train, but given we were in a strange city, we went for the easier (and slightly longer) option.
The verdict
This hotel has more highs than lows, but the lows still count. The weird bathroom, the meagre collection of towels and the schizophrenic lighting controls are all niggles that start to annoy after a few days.
Having said that, it was a decent price for a suite. It was also a quiet hotel and well-maintained. In fact it was perfectly maintained. It was incredibly clean and perfect.
The facilities were good. We wouldn’t stay here again, but that’s only because we’d want to stay somewhere a little less busy if we visited Shanghai again.
The location is both excellent and terrible. It’s walking distance to everything, but during peak times, it could sensibly be described as utter mayhem.
We walked to The Bund (around 20 minutes each way). This is a strip of land next to the Huangpu River that looks out onto a set of buildings lit up, Vegas-style. It is impressive at night, but we were one of tens of thousands of people there that evening. As my Chinese friend said, “Did you expect China to be quiet?”.
Rating The Conrad in Shanghai
Add a comment