The Short review - Good location (50 RMB from airport in taxi), lovely room (if a bit too warm) and bed, well equipped bathroom, usual excellent 4 star facilities, poor comprehension of English by most of the staff (fixable, but sometimes frustrating) and great value.
The Longer Review - We had 24 hours to kill on Chinese New Year before flying back to London. We chose the hotel for its location and the great price we got via Expedia (about £70 a night). We booked for two nights as we were arriving at 04:00 from Cambodia and wanted to get straight to the room.
We emailed a few times asking about the airport shuttle. None of my emails or a later fax were responded to, which is frustrating, but it turns out that English language problems are the reason why this happened. After a phone call and being put through to someone who did speak and understand more than very basic English it turns out that the shuttle doesn't start until 09:00, useful to know for others I hope.
The taxi from the airport cost just over 50 RMB, it was just under on the way back the next day. The journey is 15-20 minutes, depending upon the traffic and speed of the racing drivers who double as Shanghai airport taxi drivers.
Being Chinese New Year Eve the hotel was only 25% occupied, but from what we saw the rooms all looked roughly the same. There are only two non-smoking floors that we saw on the lift buttons, floors 8 & 11. Our room was large, super king sized bed (I think) with a large desk for eating/working and a large bathroom with good sized shower.
The internet worked fine for our purposes, but I wouldn't rely on it for home working and connecting to your office VPN. We had a problem with the A/C, which seemed only to pump out warm air; not sure why, but the maintenance man on duty seemed to indicate that this was the same in all of the rooms. Anyway they provided us with a fan to keep the room temperature lower than 25 degrees!
We used the pool, quite large and good temperature, but with a rock wall down one part of one length. I only write this as I gashed my foot kicking against it (by accident) on one of my laps, and it is real rock and sharp, so don't let kids too near it and mind your feet.
The staff are very friendly, very impressive, except that their English is not great, so when you hone room service you find yourself going down to reception to actually point at the items and place the order.
In summary, so long as you are aware of the minor pitfalls explained above I'd recommend this hotel for a stay when you want to be near the airport, but in comfort and without hearing planes.
