Since this is the only established hotel in the area, there were a lot of guests. Too many that the staff cannot hotel. The door was faulty, we dialed the service line but no one came. The breakfast buffet line was pandemic too. With the high traffic, plates and bowls run out quickly, not to mention the lack of seats. Go for a backpacker or lower star hotel, you may get better service.
The Regent hotel is the largest hotel in Dali. We stayed in a luxury suite, at first appearance it looks nice, but when you really start looking it is anything but five star. By the way the Five star is China standards not the same as U.S. standard. This would be. Three star at best in the U.S..
The hotel claimed to have Internet, it does not. The rugs in the room are the most soiled I have ever seen, you do not want to walk on them. The sheets on the bed are like sandpaper.
At first looks good, but when you look in detail It is disgusting. The breakfast caters to the hundreds of Chinese that stay there and no one speaks English. I asked about wifi and was brought super!
We travelled to Kunming, Dali and Lijiang in a group tour from March 20 to 27 and stayed in the Regent Dali on March 22 and 25. The hotel is huge with a maze of corridors. The room is big with all the usual amenities of a 5-star hotel. Slippers and a tissue box (the only hotel which provided this during our tour) were most appreciated. The room was cold and the heating system did not provide sufficient heat although other members of the tour found the room warm enough. We requested for a portable heater which was promptly delivered to our room by the chambermaid with a smile.
The breakfast was more than sufficient with a wide range of cooked Chinese food, rice porridge, some Western food, hot drinks (tea, coffee, hot milk and soya bean milk) and fruits (dragon fruit and tomatoes).
One thing travellers should note is that the hotel does not exchange your foreign currency for Chinese currency (RMB). So have sufficient RMB for small purchases; but you can withdraw from ATMs or use credit cards in big stores.
This is a Chinese hotel catering mainly for coachloads of domestic tourists, located in the far reaches of Yunnan Province, not a Four Seasons in a major metropolis, so expectations should be set accordingly. All the same, the Regent was pretty awful - mainly because it was absolutely freezing in our room. The heating seems to run for a few hours each morning and evening only, and certainly not overnight. By 4am we were bundled up in hats and scarves in our beds! Our requests for an electric heater were initially turned down, although on the last night the hotel relented. Beds and room otherwise not bad by mainland China standards - but the Regent isn't an experience we'll be repeating.
This was the first stop on our five day Yunnan tour which was organised by my girlfriend's work. We didn't have a say in which hotels we stayed in; however, we had been to China before and knew what to expect.
We arrived on a cold, wet November evening. The hotel was massive and not badly decorated, but had no heating outside of the rooms - this is normal for hotels here; however, it meant the inside of the hotel was about 5c. The staff, who all looked suitably miserable, wore massive jackets and spoke no English – meaning that our tour guide had to do everything while we had dinner (the standard tour food).
Our room was part of the main block which backed on to the court yard and was a long stroll from reception. The room matched the rest of the hotel and was very big - they provided slippers (you will need these, as smoking in hotels rooms is still acceptable in China), dressing gowns, umbrellas and the usual bathroom accessories (look carefully before diving in as some of the things supplied by the wash basin aren't free). There was also a shower and a bath. I had no major complaints about the room, apart from the bed being a little hard. We did have problems getting the heating to work and ended up having to sleep under two duvets - not sure if there was a problem with the heating, or whether it was me not being able to work out the confusing central control panel. Several of our group has the same experience.
Location wise, the hotel seemed to be on the outskirts of Dali - we wanted to have a look around, but there was nothing within a five to ten minute walk from the hotel. We had already travelled for several hours and needed to be up early the next day, so didn't fancy taking a taxi. There was a shop on the road next to the hotel, so we got a couple of drinks and headed back.
Breakfast the next day wasn't bad - certainly a lot of food. More Chinese in style than Western being that a large percentage of the hotel was made up of Chinese tourists, but it did the job on a cold November morning. After breakfast we checked out and were away on the next leg of our Yunnan tour.
All in all, not a bad hotel for a one night stay: not a 5 star hotel by western standards, but this has been the same for all the ones of I have been to.
