The Langham, Shanghai, Xintiandi

It was a very elegant hotel, the check in process and greeting was lovely, the staff was very polite and pleasant, and the breakfast was fantastic. The room was very nice as well, despite issues with the heat, which was a problem. And I also appreciated the nice doorman who got me a car and went out of his way to make sure the driver knew where I was going.

I had a problem with the heat the first night, it didn’t get warm despite being set on the highest temperature (much higher than it actually was in the room). I had to call the desk at 1am, the engineer came up and raised the temperature to 30 degree Celsius (!) and said it was fixed and would get warm. It never did and I was freezing all night and had to wear layers of clothes and didn’t sleep at all. In the morning I told the desk, and two engineers came up, agreed it was broken, and spent over an hour and a half in my room fixing it. They brought a space heater in the meantime, which they should have done at 1am the night before. As I waited for them to fix it, I I couldn’t shower or get ready, and I asked to be put in another room; they said no comparable rooms were ready yet, and showed me an inferior room (I paid for a better one), so I waited in my room for them to fix the heat or get a comparable room. Eventually, well over an hour later, they showed me a comparable room (two floors down, so still not as nice), which they warmed up for me. But by that point, the engineers fixed my heat, so I decided to stay rather than move all my things. And I kept the space heater. But really. This is not what one would expect at a five star hotel like The Langham. They should have brought me a space heater at 1am in addition to having someone try to fix it, then since the problem persisted, I should have immediately been moved to an upgraded room or whatever was available. If I had an early meeting, I would have been a mess.