Name: Cullinan Hotel
Address: No. 1 South Section of Zhuque Main Street, Yanta District, Xi'an China, Xi'an, Xi'an, Xi'an, China
Rating: 9

Location

Xianyang International Airport

Cullinan Hotel

This hotel is beautiful, fancy one. The rooms are large, clean and light. From the upper floors the view is very nice. The bathroom has both shower and bathtub. Beds are comfortable, wide enough and with nice bed sheets. 
In the room there is a tiny minibar, ironing facilities, towels & bath rocks. Excellent breakfast serves a huge variety of both western and Asian foods.

This was my second stay at this hotel, previously I was here for a week in September, so I knew what to expect. It comprises a tower block and a lower central block.

I was quickly checked in and up in the lift to my room, 1610 (last time I was in 1812). Note that the rooms ending 10 and 12 are next to the lifts so there is some mechanical noise from those.  There are 20 floors. I was impressed with the lift technology. I had to place my key next to a reader and the floor was automatically selected. The room was spacious and looked comfortable. There were twin beds, comfortable chair, desk, coffee and tea making facilities, minibar, safe and tv. Air conditioning worked well.

The bathroom had a bath, shower and washbasin. The shower and bath were separate and looked well designed. Unusually, no bar of soap was provided. Instead there was a soap dispenser by the washbasin. Shampoo, bath foam and conditioner were also provided. Also tissues. There was always plenty of hot water from either an overhead shower or a wall mounted hand spray. The bathroom had a washing line that extended over the bath. Sadly no iron was provided so my shirts remained creased after washing them. You can often tell when a hotel is good and that is by how quickly they deal with any problems. The first morning I turned on the overhead shower, luckily stepped out from under it to allow the water to warm up, and then was surprised as the shower head crashed to the floor! I reported it to reception and went to have my breakfast at 0700. I returned to my room at 0730 to find it had already been repaired. Very impressive.

Although there was a tv, there were no English channels. Lighting was ok, but there were no lights over the bed for reading, nor near the chair.

When I entered the room, I found the cupboard door containing the minibar to be wide open. This is because the cupboard gets very hot with waste heat from the fridge. Something to remember when deciding where to store your possessions.

WiFi was good in the mornings and lunchtime, but seemed very slow in the evenings.

Two out of the three chambermaids I had were great, always smiling, leaving me lots of coffee and even folding my clothes! The third was more surly and had a habit of throwing away my toothbrush and toothpaste twice, very frustrating because the second time they were freshly opened.

Breakfast was buffet and good, with a wide selection of fresh fruit, pastries, hot and cold food. Yoghurt was from a big bowl and was delicious. Lunch is also a buffet, which I had only once but it was very good. There is no buffet in the evenings. Dinner is from the same cafe as breakfast and lunch, or from the hotel’s Chinese restaurants. There are also restaurants nearby and in a big shopping mall opposite.

After two weeks I was happy with my stay and look forward to returning next year. I felt very comfortable. Certainly language is a problem - I know no Chinese and most of them know very little English - but we managed to get by. The hotel is also about 10 minutes away from a metro station, natural history museum, TV tower and a few other attractions, not that I had any time for them this time.

There is a fitness centre on floor -1. However, although this is marked in the lifts in the tower block, they do not go there! Instead you have to use the lifts near reception which service the lower centre block. Once on -1, getting into the gym was not easy. It is open 1000-2200. Coming out of the lifts, the obvious way to go is right but that is wrong. Instead I had to knock loudly on a locked door and wait to be let in! I used the gym between 1100 and 1200 four consecutive days and was either alone or there was only one other exerciser. There is a swimming pool but it did not open until 2020. Although it was not busy when I was there, I believe it is very busy in the evenings.

When visiting this city, I have usually stayed in either the Holiday Inn, Greenland city, or the ZTE. Therefore I was a little concerned when I learned I would be staying in this hotel for a week. Reading the reviews on Tripadvisor had helped to reassure me but only a little. My major concern was being able to cope because I know no Chinese and suspected the hotel staff might know no English. On the latter, I encountered only one person who had some knowledge of English and she was very helpful. On two occasions I ate by myself and she was on duty in the restaurant at the time. The only menu was in Chinese, but there was a folder containing pictures of dishes with English names. The only negative aspect was not all the dishes were available because it had not been updated. However, armed with my phrasebook and doing a bit of pointing, I got a few smiles from the other staff as they corrected my atrocious Chinese during my stay.

I was quickly checked in and up in the lift to my room 1812. There are 20 floors. I was impressed with the lift technology. I had to place my key next to a reader and the floor was automatically selected. The room was spacious and looked comfortable. There were twin beds, comfortable chair, desk, coffee and tea making facilities, minibar, safe and tv. Air conditioning worked well.

The bathroom had a bath, shower and washbasin. The shower and bath were separate and looked well designed. Unusually, no bar of soap was provided. Instead there was a soap dispenser by the washbasin. Shampoo, bath foams and conditioner were also provided. Also tissues. There was always plenty of hot water from either an overhead shower or a wall mounted hand spray. The bathroom had a washing line that extends over the bath. Sadly no iron was provided so my shirts remained creased after washing them.

Although there was a tv, there were no English channels. Lighting was ok, but there were no lights over the bed for reading, nor near the chair.

When I entered the room, I found the cupboard door containing the minibar to be wide open. This is because the cupboard gets very hot with waste heat from the fridge. Something to remember when deciding where to store your possessions.

WiFi was good in the mornings and lunchtime, but seemed very slow in the evenings. Also, there seemed to be some sort of firewall in operation by the hotel’s provider which affected my use of two websites I frequently use for work purposes. I could still access them but each time and frequently during the course of a session, had to enter an annoying captcha which was very difficult to read and did not distinguish clearly between lower and upper case letters. I have never encountered this problem before in China so it had to be something to do with the hotel. I showed the problem to my point of contact and he seemed bemused and unable to help.

Breakfast was buffet and good, with a wide selection of fresh fruit, pastries, hot and cold food. Yoghurt was from a big bowl and was delicious. Lunch is also a buffet, which I had only once but it was very good. There is no buffet in the evenings. Dinner is from the same cafe as breakfast and lunch, or from the hotel’s Chinese restaurants. There are also restaurants nearby and in a big shopping mall opposite.

After a week I was happy with my stay and look forward to returning for two weeks in November. I felt very comfortable. Certainly language is more of a problem than the Holiday Inn, for example, but it is significantly cheaper, I believe, and it is my hosts who pay for the stay. The hotel is also about 10 minutes away from a metro station, natural history museum, TV tower and a few other attractions, not that I had any time for them this time.

Cullinan Hotel

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