Stayed for 8 nights Oct 2011 while attending Canton Fair.
Had been there about 8 years ago when it recently opened.
Accommodations are spacious and clean. Good breakfast buffet included in rate.
Free shuttle transportation to/from hotel/Pazhou convention center (45-50 min).
Hotel is pretty isolated, cab ride to Guangzhou areas of interest 45-60 min depending on traffic. Food at the restaurant is very regular, according to my western standards.
Again, it was an ok stay, OK for the price considering it's Canton fair, where prices go up. Next time I'll reserve ahead of time to get a hotel better located. Even though one is tired from walking the fair all day, GZ has many great things to see!
If possible, try not to miss the 2010 built GZ Opera House, designed by reknowned Iranian architect Zaha Hadid...... spectacular!!!

This is a very impressive looking hotel, with extensive marble and painted ceilings. Staff are polite and friendly and if you work hard you get a lovely smile. Tends to get a lot of Conference business as well as Trade Fair delegates and the room prices are certainly value for money for this level of hotel.
With one main dining restaurant and a single Chines Restaurant, it is certainly lacking in variety for a hotel with this number of rooms! For a Westerner, not versed in Chinese, the descriptions of the dishes in the Chinese restaurant are 'interesting'! I must try the braised tit!!
Internet connection is free and good coverage throughout the Hotel for WiFi, so Smartphones get well used for free.
My only gripe is this hotel is well away from Guangzhou, so when you tell people you have been to Guangzhou and they ask what it is like, I have to say I have not been to the city!

Although a little way out from the City, this hotel is beautiful. We bought a Groupon package and took a coach directly from HK to the shuttle bus stop at Phoenix Village. The free shuttle bus takes you to the hotel in around 5-10 mins, so it was quite easy to get to. It is quite impressive inside. Rooms are big and very clean, with an ordinary room having two 4ft beds, and there is a very large bathroom. We requested connecting rooms and this wasn't a problem. We overlooked the mountains and lake and had a large balcony. Facilities are good, with a large outdoor pool and a decent sized indoor one. We stayed here with 2 other families for a weekend. All of us had kids and the children were happy to play in the pools. The food in the restaurants was ok and we tried both the buffet breakfast and the buffet dinner and also ate in the Chinese restaurant. There are 2 different Spa facilities and we went to the cheaper one. It was very clean and the massage was very good. We tried both full body massage and foot massage. Service was good and it's a good place to relax and you can always take the free shuttle bus and eat in the village if you want to eat out. Good for a relaxing weekend away from the City.

The Phoenix City is a pseudo-Venetian megahotel in the ‘burbs of the Guangzhou megalopolis - about half an hour by taxi from the city’s East railway station (make sure you get a metered taxi, definitely don’t prepay more than 100RMB). We stayed here for a couple of nights on a group-buying deal from Hong Kong, so no complaints about the price.

The room was stupidly spacious. The vast emptiness between bed and balcony could easily have held another king-size bed, though a sofa would have been nice to fill the gap. The bathroom was equally generous, offering both bath and shower. Unique touch: a glass-bottomed sink. I’ve never been able to look at my toes while washing my hands before, and I found it curiously disconcerting.

A large balcony overlooked the outdoor pool offering views across to the verdant hillside. Is this really Guangzhou? Could be Samui! (Except the full moon is orange because of the pollution.)

The outdoor pool is huge, though not deep, and wasn’t busy during the day. The indoor pool is a decent size too, and there’s a gym, karaoke and mahjong rooms, spa, and sauna to amuse. And a billiard room, which I couldn’t find.

Overall, the hotel has a cheesy charm: from the rows of customer-free shops displaying 1980’s fashions, to the medieval frescos on the reception ceiling, to the soft-rock pumped out during the breakfast buffet. It’s Macau without the ching! ching! ching! of the slot machines.

Not much to really dislike, though I toyed with two stars because it’s sometimes a bit shabby. The showers in the men’s changing rooms face the toilet stalls so there’s an ever-present smell of pee; the food was average, at best, and made unpleasant by the aforementioned soft rock at breakfast as well as live singing at dinner; I had wine stains on a tablecloth; and there was a smoker’s smelly residue in our room. Oh, and the Internet connection varied between fine and unusably slow.

But go in expecting adequacy and you won’t be disappointed.