This time I went to Shanghai to celebrate my birthday. I chose to live in a 100-year-old building to experience the old Shanghai of that special period. I always choose Ctrip for every trip. It is a very convenient experience. It will recommend similar products according to the search. The first one I booked was Mahler Villa. They recommended this Taiyuan villa. I chose to experience it just because the appearance looked good. I booked the most ordinary price. Here I have to seriously evaluate the experience of staying.
1️⃣ Check-in: We arrived at the villa at 11 o'clock in the morning on the 11th. I thought about putting down the luggage and checking in in the afternoon. The lobby manager who received us (of course there was only one employee in the entire lobby at that time) said directly that there was a room available for us to check in. We expressed our happiness and gratitude. The manager introduced very sincerely and politely that the main building could not be checked in. We could only check in the annex building and arranged the only room with a balcony for us. I immediately expressed my happiness and gratitude. Today is the Double Ninth Festival and it is my birthday. This is a very good birthday gift.
2️⃣ Living environment: To be honest, the pictures I saw on Ctrip are very good, but those are the rooms in the main building, and there is no introduction to the annex. The annex is a two-story building in the corner opposite the villa lawn, with a total of 10 rooms, which is a normal four-star state guesthouse standard (the manager learned from our brief chat when checking us in that the Mahler Villa we stayed in in the morning, including the Du Yuesheng Villa and the Taiyuan Villa we were going to stay in next, are all owned by their Donghu Group. The manager said that Mahler and Du Yuesheng have been renovated, and it will be their Taiyuan Hotel's turn next year). The manager mentioned twice that they would be a little older here, and I also said in my heart that since I came here, I would accept it, mainly to experience the building and the overall feeling. Indeed, there is nothing in the room except the bed and the bathroom. If you want to experience it, you can wait for the renovation to be better. (Of course, it may be because the price I booked is the most ordinary, so I didn’t live in the room in the picture on Ctrip) This is not clearly indicated on Ctrip.
If you need to experience it, I suggest friends call to confirm whether your room is the main building or the annex.
3️⃣ Staff service: We met the lobby manager, housekeeper, doorman in the morning, and lobby service staff in the afternoon.
The lobby manager was very sincere, enthusiastic and polite, which is the standard for this type of hotel management👍
The housekeeper took the initiative to help us take our luggage to the room on the second floor of the annex building, and we also gave tips for the service🫰
The doorman was very responsible for entering and exiting, because there are many tourists passing by here who want to come in and punch in, but this should be only the guests staying in the house can enter and exit. When he learned that we came from Hong Kong, he took the initiative to introduce the history of Taiyuan Villa to me and my husband. When we learned that this was where Chairman Mao lived every time he came to Shanghai, we immediately had another meaning in our hearts and decided to bring our son to visit it seriously in the afternoon.
We returned to the villa and entered the lobby at around five o'clock in the afternoon. There were three young ladies, one sitting at the front desk, and the other two standing in the middle of the living room. As soon as we entered, we smiled and said that we had checked in and wanted to visit the villa now. One of the female employees said that there was a meeting in the two rooms below and we could not visit. While talking to me, she closed the door of one of the rooms. I asked if I could visit upstairs? She said yes, and the three of us went up the stairs. There were only rooms with closed doors upstairs. We went up for a minute and then came down. Then my husband and son went out. I went back to take a photo of the place where Chairman Mao’s photo was.
When I was taking pictures, something unpleasant happened. Two employees standing one meter behind me (the two people I saw when I came in) said to me in half Mandarin mixed with Shanghainese behind me, ”Her bag is fake.” My first reaction was that I was very surprised (Do I need you to evaluate the authenticity of my 200-square-meter house in Mid-Levels, Central!) Of course, I didn't say anything. I went out directly after taking the photo.
Here I say that this is a very bad experience after staying in so many hotels. My bad feeling is that I know this is a place where Chairman Mao was received many times, and it is also a place where domestic and foreign dignitaries are often received. How can there be such quality employees? This is a building with historical significance. This is not just a hotel under the East Lake Group. It represents the overall service level of our country. As a service industry, this is a window to the outside world. How can there be such low-quality employees working here to manage reception services?
I hope that the management of Taiyuan Villa can deal with such employees strictly, improve the quality of enterprise employees, and not lower the image of the country.
