Yitel (Shanghai New International Expo Center Expo Garden)

Honestly, I had a pretty poor experience here. I have absolutely no idea how this hotel has four diamonds and a top recommendation. Have you ever noticed how you can tell the quality of a hotel by quality of the carpets/flooring in the halls? These carpets were in really, really rough shape. Dirty and lumpy (maybe “bumpy” or “off road terrain” would be a better description) and stained black and brown. Definitely foreshadowing. I arrived and got my room key. Turns out that I had missed that I had booked a smoking room. My bad. So, I contacted the staff and paid $5/night for an upgrade to a non-smoking room. Aaaand, it smelled like cigarettes. I shrugged my shoulders, dropped off my bags and headed back into Shanghai proper. (This neighborhood seems to primarily be the elderly and there doesn’t seem to be much happening, though I didn’t dig too deep.) When I returned a few hours later and actually spent some time in the room I found that it smelled like smoke AND urine. I hated to be a Karen about this (no offense, Karen), but I just didn’t want to sleep on that bed. I went back to the front desk and asked for another room. They were kind and courteous and gave me a new room. Well, this room also smelled like smoke. I gave up, opened the window, cranked the air handler (I didn’t use A/C because I had the window open) and turned on the bathroom fan. Again, I want to reiterate that the staff were amazing. One of them was even a cute robot. But, this place was two star at best and I just can’t recommend it until they do some serious cleaning and renovation. That said, the room was cheap and I was only going to to be there for two nights. I was told that I could rent it by the hour if I preferred. That made sense.

As a solo foreign traveler, this wasn’t the best location for a hotel in Shanghai. It’s a very “local” Chinese area. With that said, the room was very nice and clean, the staff was very helpful and friendly. The breakfast was very Chinese so I’d recommend just going to McDonald’s next door. It’s about a 10-15 minute walk to line 6 subway. There are lots of local shops, barbers and restaurants nearby though, which helped make the stay more pleasant.

Very well established hotel. Staff was nice, and the breakfast is good. Rooms are clean, with nicely working conditioner (which is important in winter in Shanghai). Bathroom is good too.

Out of town, so you will need to use the metro or hire a scooter or get peddling. The hotel however was excellent, room spacious, bed lovely, great shower.

Location wise it is quite near to our business trip area which is expo centre. Below the hotel are just so convenient where you can have fast food, local foods, convenient store, drug store and etc. you just won’t miss a thing if you need any. Only thing is that it is a very basic hotel for business trip rather than for holiday trip. So totally recommend this hotel for business purpose.

Nice hotel, Everything you need is nearby. You can even find metro nearby

Close with SNIC ,easy got food

Great location and good service

It was an amazing time.