Beijing Youlan hotel

A decent hotel at a reasonable price point. As a hotel, it is obvious that it's decided to spend on certain things but cut out others. E.g., their hair dryer, humidifier are from more reputable brands. Their toiletries are also a grade better than the usual business hotels. However, the hotel lacks a TV (reasonable) and proper shelving and cabinets (not so reasonable). So while the room looks really nice, it's not as practical. Location wise, it's in somewhat residential are, so you have small mom-and-pop eateries around the hotel. Not too many options. It's about a 5 minute walk to the nearest metro station and 10 minute walk to the more convenient metro station. Overall, we enjoyed our stay there.

Very different experience to the typical hotels, in a good way! Staff were very friendly and helpful. The first thing you'll encounter when you arrive is the main courtyard, where you'll often find other guests chilling out. We had two double bed rooms as we had my wife's parents joining us on this trip. The rooms were very well suited for us, especially travelling with a 2 and 9 year old. They don't have TV's in the rooms but that was good as we spent more time out doing things. Nice little chinese tea set in each room with a couple of tea options to try. Fully equipped and spacious bathrooms (Japanese toilets appear to be more common now), as well as a soaking bath that the kids loved. Room was cleaned every day. Buffet breakfast was good, maybe a few less options than you'd get at the larger hotels but definitely enough to satisfy most people. They'll also do wanton soup on request, just ask. You've got access to a lot of restaurants, and FamilyMart (convenience store) on the main road. Wangfujing St and Forbidden City are within waking distance, but there are also the buses and train stations very close to reach those attractions a bit further away (use Amap to plan trips because you'll be changing lines often). We missed out on booking fast train tickets home on our intended return date due to the public holiday, but they were able to extend our booking for both rooms. Recommend that you contact the hotel directly if you want to make a booking and they'll let you know the cheapest option. They also gave us a nice little gift when we checked out which was a nice surprise.

A lovely hotel about 800m away from the Wangfujing pedestrian shopping street. Its unique environment is a refreshing change from the stale hotel styles of Beijing.