I stayed at the Tainan Hotel in May 2007. Overall, I found the staff to be extremely friendly and professional. The buffet was OK, but not great.

My biggest complaint is that I asked for a very quiet room, and I was given a room that is just 2 floors above their open area karaoke center. For 2 nights, I had to listen to yelling, shouting, and off-key singing at loud volume. I made a complaint and the staff was more than willing to find me another room. However, I was really disappointed that they would put me in this room to begin with.

Also, my hotel room was disappointing: small, with a small TV and not very new furniture.

I have stayed in hotels in Tainan several times before, and there are other hotels with newer, larger rooms that are available at cheaper prices. Tainan Hotel is not the worst, but there are better values in Tainan.

I was looking for a homely hotel for my stay in Tainan and i find it in the shape of Hotel Tainan. Check in was quick and the girls on reception used there english pretty well and were friendly. The room was what you expect from a good hotel in the USA and was spacious with a desk for doing any work if it was a business trip which mine was'nt. Had my laptop and was able to get online free of charge with High Speed ADSL connection. The location is very central with the railway station only across the street and lots of shops only a block away. Also a free Breakfast Buffet was available with i wide variety of foods for the Westerner as well as the locals.Overall i loved staying in this Hotel and will stay there again.

This hotel was recommended to us by a contact in National Cheng Kung University.
Though it is close to the train station and all the bus stops, our front facing room was not affected by the traffic noise at all. The bathroom is standard small, and stay the same even for larger rooms/suites. The rooms may be designated non-smoking, but the corridors are not. I suppose this has to do with the smoking habit of the populace/clients. I witnessed some vacated rooms being force ventilated. Room size is good, esp after visiting Hong Kong. Furniture layout is functional, without the wasteful "taste" of Italian hotels, nor the "extravaganza" traps experienced in Shanghai or Beijing. The room has an unstocked fridge, wise when there are two 7-11 and more similar shops within a block. Not only internet connections are free (both speeds available) in the room, there is also a room with 2 free workstations.
All meals are buffet style. Breakfast is included, and it caters to the local Chinese, Japanese as well as standard "western" styles. Well needless to say, it doesn't provide yogurt, nor more than one variety of cheeses and hams as one experienced in central Europe, but there is a chef on duty for varieties of eggs, omelette etc. The one I missed most throughout the Orient is freshly baked crusty bread. In this hotel the only thing close is their grainery roll.
There is no icemaker machine in public, so one has to ask for room service.
Lunch and dinner are also served buffet style in both Chinese and European restaurants. Prices are different. Weekend prices are higher, but swarmed with locals. Choice is great, and the attractions is certainly "all you can eat". One can go up to the counter to select the meat or seafood (incl king crab) and ask the chef to prepare them your way. The limitation is their closing time. We liked their fruit plates esp pineapple. Tthe Chinese restaurant serves dim sum, some of which is inferior to those we tasted in Hong Kong.
The fact that the NCK University and a department store is just across the other side of the rail station, linked by a tunnel, (the dept store has a courtesy bus running around for clients) and most city buses stop by at the traffic circle, and long distance bus terminals a block away, and some major tourist attractions are within 15 min walk makes this hotel a good base to spend a few days.
The only unhelpful bit from a fellow in the front desk when we ask for directions was the standard answer "take a taxi" irrespective of distance. Well the taxi fare may be cheap but as a visitor we wanted to walk the streets and sample the local life. Maybe he wasn't expecting this kind of tourists. Afterall it was not a rough neighbourhood. Taiwan is pretty civilised and the people are friendly. The only scary situation is when scooters do a right turn, they don't respect designated pedestrian crossings.

I just stayed in this hotel in 01/2006 and it was fantastic. It wasn't available on travel sites like expedia. Rather, a friend booked it for me w/ her company discount. It came out to about $2350 NT a night. A bit pricey but definitely worth the money compared with the other hotel I stayed in that was half the price.

Basically, the hotel is geared toward business travelers. So it has a very helpful staff, a clean hotel room, clean bathrooms with good amenities. What was a wonderful surprise was the fantastic free breakfast buffet that's included. (The hotel has 2 restaurants, one of which people even hold weddings there, to give you an idea of its quality). The buffet has a mix of traditional Chinese (soy milk, pourridge, etc) and western breakfast (omeletes, sausages, coffee, etc). And they were all really good.

And the other big plus is its location. It's a 5 minute walk from the Tainan Train station. It is a bit far though from the tourist sites. But I'd take not lugging my suitcase over walking to tourist sites anyday. Those are reachable by cheap taxis anyway.

In summary, I highly recommend this hotel.