Guide to luxury hotels in China

As someone who often travels to China for business and stays in luxury hotels each time, I wanted to make a post about what "luxury hotels" in China mean. Many things are "new" but not "luxury", and I was surprised to find that Chinese travel sites break "luxury" or "5 star" into three subcategories -- "奢华" (shehua, extravagant), "豪华" (haohua, luxurious), and "高档" (gaodang, high end). There's also a category of 顶奢 (dingshe, top extravagance), but it's not really used as much -- think AMAN or Upper House Chengdu, which, price-wise, are still in chubby travel territory in China.

The other thing is that brand loyalty is unreliable in China. St Regis, for instance, can have significant variance between cities or even within a city (Shenzhen, for example). The Ritz Carlton in Shanghai is very different from the one in Guangzhou. Most of this variance is a result of building and hotel age, which causes the operator to shift the best staff and managers away to the newer property, creating a self fulfilling hierarchy.

奢华 (shehua, extravagant) typically refers to the top tier of 5 star hotels in China. These hotels are recently constructed or newly renovated, have top end finishings, a diverse breakfast with Western and Chinese options, butler (guanjia, 管家) service (really just a glorified concierge, not a real butler), and a lack of robot food delivery -- you have to pick up takeout orders yourself. Examples include the Rosewood Guangzhou, Andaz Shenzhen, Bulgari Shanghai. You can expect nightly prices in the range of 3000+ RMB. Exceptionally well kept older hotels, like the Four Seasons Westlake Hangzhou, are still in this category.

豪华 (haohua, luxurious) refers to the middle tier of 5 star hotels. These hotels are either older, former shehua hotels in their day that have aged and are now demoted, or newer hotels that are intentionally not serving the top market sector. They usually have robot food delivery, may have butler service, and their breakfast will be significantly less diverse. You'll notice that while the building materials remain high quality (marble, stone, solid wood) there are chintzy interior design choices, inconsistent or worse service, and so on. Someone may open your car door for you, or may not. You might also find second tier brands like Grand Hyatts in this tier, if they are located in cities without any first tier brands (example: Kunming Grand Hyatt). Almost all Shangrila locations fall into this category, as they were the first major western luxury brand to launch proper 5 star hotels in China during the 2000s. (Almost, because Shangrila has started to build new hotels, like the Shangrila Nanshan Shenzhen.)

高档 (gaodang, high end) refers to the lowest tier of 5 star hotels. They will typically do the bare minimum to satisfy that requirement, like having a small bathtub, or a very small pool and spa area. There is almost certainly no concierge service. Things like Howard Johnson and Intercity fall into this category, and in smaller cities like Datong you might only have these options. In my opinion, there's no need to seek out a 5 star hotel at this point, just choose the nicest looking 4 or 5 star hotel with the most recent construction.

顶奢 (dingshe, top extravagance) hotels are quite rare; many cities, even large ones like Guangzhou or Shenzhen, don't have them. Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu do. Typically a more boutique hotel or one that has focused extremely heavily on an almost servile service experience with people at your every footstep and beck and call.

One common thread is that service is significantly less polished than any hotels in the west or even in Hong Kong. Luxury hotels simply haven't been a thing here for more than 10-20 years, and so everyone, even up to the local hotel management, is inexperienced, which shows in their work. So far only select shehua and dingshe hotels have solved this -- the Shenzhen St Regis Bao'an, for instance, brought in a hotel manager with experience in HK luxury hotels, which significantly elevates the service level. And at the gaodang and some haohua hotels, you can't expect fluent English from the desk staff.