Century Hotel Taicang

“Always good. ”

We visited Taicang in 2018 and 2019. Both times with school children from Wirral, U.K. We use the Century as a base to visit our sister school and other local attractions. The Century is clean and well sized. Flat screen TVs are in all the rooms and there are many channels. The best English o… more

We visited Taicang in 2018 and 2019. Both times with school children from Wirral, U.K. We use the Century as a base to visit our sister school and other local attractions. The Century is clean and well sized. Flat screen TVs are in all the rooms and there are many channels. The best English one has recent movies on it. The children liked this channel the best. I can’t remember it having an English news channel. . The rooms are double beds, double doubles or triple doubles to cater with lots of needs. Bathrooms have a bath, shower or both. There are two bottles of water available each day in the room, complimentary, as you shouldn’t drink the tap water. The breakfast area is huge with lots of light. The Chinese eat similar food for breakfast as the rest of the day, so there is plenty of choice. There is toast, cheese, fried egg, great coffee and sometimes chips, onion rings and other western foods (that we don’t eat for breakfast). There are business services on site and it has its own restaurant/banquets areas. This year, is the first time I’ve eaten an evening meal at the hotel. It was excellent. There reception area has a large lounge with artwork and there are two massage chairs (a recent addition, but very welcome!). We’ll be back again in 2020. Thank you.

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“One of Taicang's Best Hotels”

The Taicang Century is one of the three best hotels in Taicang (and the other two are insanely expensive...) The rooms are spotlessly clean, well-equipped, and extremely quiet (the windows are all double-glazed, to keep the rooms warm/cool, but the side-effect is you can barely hear the traffic ou… more

The Taicang Century is one of the three best hotels in Taicang (and the other two are insanely expensive...) The rooms are spotlessly clean, well-equipped, and extremely quiet (the windows are all double-glazed, to keep the rooms warm/cool, but the side-effect is you can barely hear the traffic outside). You can set your desired temperature on the individual thermostat in the room. The room is a little smaller than you would find in most American hotels -- but so is the price! And how much room do you need for sleeping, anyway? If you do want to hold a business meeting, the hotel has a range of fully-equipped meeting rooms you can hire, right up to a full conference room (because the hotel is run by the China Training Centre, it has a complete training complex as part of it). Internet is important to me, and the cable internet at the Taicang Century is true broadband quality. Yes, they have WiFi as well, but only a fool would connect a business laptop to WiFi in any hotel in the world, let alone in China. On WiFi, you have no idea who else is listening. Or looking. All those lovely banking details and passwords will be "shared" in a flash! The plumbing in the bathroom works perfectly (not always the case in Chinese hotels). The hot water comes on instantly, there is never a shortage, the shower works well. The shampoo and body wash are clearly labelled and in different colours: so important for people who wear glasses which have to be removed to shower: there's nothing more frustrating than being unable to read the labels on the products. The bed is huge, and very comfortable. It's a firm mattress, but not as firm as Chinese hotels usually are. Pillows are good and there are four of them. The hotel offers a wide range of services, not the least of which is competent assistance in English. Say hello to "Penny" for me, and tell her her English is a lot better than she thinks it is. One mark of a good hotel is "What happens after hours when the 'A' team goes home?" At the Taicang Century, the same level of service is delivered. The nightshift can competently reverse the charges on an international credit card at 04:30 in the morning: I know, I tried it! Now speaking of that "Price", a range of prices are available. If you are in a hurry you can book at the rack rate. But if you take the time to work through any one of the booking agencies you will see much better prices. If your contacts in Taicang have a corporate rate card, you can book this hotel for around CNY 325 a night, which is VERY good for the level of facilities provided.

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