Are you planning to visit Shanghai (China)? Do you know where to stay in Shanghai city? Shanghai is indeed a huge city. A vagabond traveler needs to carefully work out a good Shanghai accommodation in order to have a wonderful trip. In fact, there are indeed plenty of options for the future Shanghai dwellers. However, I’d recommend exercising a bit of caution when you finalize your accommodation in Shanghai. In this post I’d give you some tips to avoid certain accommodation types in order to enjoy Shanghai tourism.
My trips in China
It has been a wonderful experience travelling in China so far. Although I’ve travelled solo from north to south, and been working in Suzhou for more than three months, I still hadn’t been to Shanghai until a few days ago.
In fact, once I was all set to visit Shanghai and had already booked train and hotels, but the weather spoiled the whole thing. Due to heavy rain and snowfall in January 2018, I had to cancel my trip.
Anyways, on Chinese New Year 2018, I finally visited Shanghai (February, 2018). As such, Shanghai was my 10th Chinese city, and I was confident about having a good trip. But I ended up in a very poor situation. I faced a very weird housing fiasco that I wish no one else in future would encounter ever again. Let me tell you more about the fiasco.
Mainland Chinese Citizens – Special Offer/ Business Double/ Twin Room
I decided to visit Shanghai city around the Chinese New Year time. The accommodations were being sold out very fast. I had to spend a considerable amount of time searching for a good accommodation. When I was trying to book a lodging on Booking.com, I found so many options available with the tag – “Mainland Chinese Citizens – Special Offer/ Business Double/ Twin Room”. I’ll add the page’s screenshot here for a better clarity-
The booking page was initially in Chinese (since I logged in from China). So I asked my Chinese colleagues about the “Mainland Chinese Citizens” clause. They told me that it’s just that the Chinese citizens would have some special advantage (e.g. promotion, discounts). I also learnt that the foreigners could also stay if a booking is confirmed.
I was still not very sure, so I translated the booking page to English (and later even changed the booking page’s language to English). Finally, I ended up booking an accommodation with “Hi Inn Shanghai Huadong Normal University”. No questions were asked about my nationality. Booking.com, as always, smoothly confirmed my booking in Shanghai.
The photos of “Hi Inn Shanghai Huadong Normal University” displayed on Booking.com looked really nice, but I’ll show you a photo (that I clicked) of the entrance of Hi Inn, it wasn’t very inspiring-
Where to stay in Shanghai? I was not allowed to stay despite a confirmed booking
I came to Shanghai from Suzhou by train. After reaching Shanghai, I headed to Hi Inn by subway. The receptionist could only speak in Chinese. So initially I didn’t get what he wanted to say. I even showed him the Chinese version print out of my booking confirmation. The receptionist used a translator to tell me that Hi Inn only allowed Chinese citizens. As such, despite me trying my best to convince the receptionist, I was not allowed to lodge at Hi Inn.
I was already very tired due to the train/subway journey and felt highly frustrated with the unexpected fiasco. But there was no other option than to leave Hi Inn. For a while, I even considered returning back to Suzhou. Thankfully, I didn’t!
Anyways, I had to immediately find a new accommodation. I again used Booking.com and quickly found a new place some 7-8km away from “Hi Inn Shanghai Huadong Normal University”. Since the new place was booked without much careful planning, it turned out to be another fiasco (single dude here). 🙂
An appeal to booking.com
I do humbly accept that I’m partly responsible to take a risk. But it was the first time for me to see such accommodation types, and I ended up making a mistake. Hopefully future travelers to Shanghai (or other cities in any country) will be careful about it.
My point is, Booking.com already knows a traveler’s detail (such as passport, nationality, credit card, etc.). Why does it sell “Mainland Chinese Citizens” rooms to the non-Chinese citizens?
Dear Booking.com, we pay the appropriate price for the accommodations and expect the professional services to be rendered. After considerable personal efforts, I have improved my Chinese skills in the last couple of months (I have an online project to teach Mandarin). That’s why I could still manage the housing fiasco in Shanghai. However, if a traveler doesn’t know Chinese or is very new in a huge city like Shanghai, it could be a big-big trouble. I, therefore, on behalf of the whole traveler community, would humbly request you to look into such issues at priority. Let the businesses be conducted by professional standards.
I’d look forward to the improved housing options in Shanghai and elsewhere.
That’s all in this post.
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Last updated: Monday, February 19, 2018