Hotel Blogging - Home Inn (Guangzhou)

I'm sure there's more than one of these things in Guangzhou. I think it's aiming to be something like a Holiday Inn. I require very little from my hotel rooms - basic, clean, and good internet (I am told I have an addiction), are my requirements. So this is I think an encouraging development in China. It's actually a public company HMIN on the NASDAQ (expensive, but if it weren't, I would be a buyer so it's on my watch list). At 180 RMB a night (but my room was more expensive because it had a window and a larger bed), the internet was great. My theory about internet and hotel rooms is that sometimes it's the dumpier/more basic hotels that will have better internet because fewer of the lodgers will have laptops with which to use said internet.

Of course these places have tv's that don't have any english (whereas the Novotel even had HBO Asia along with the usual CNN International), and they don't have anyone who speaks a smidgen of english let alone cantonese, but it's nothing a cell phone call to someone who does can't solve.



If I may dwell on this for a moment though, places like this are a departure and quite encouraging for China which typically has much smaller lodging houses which are inconsistent at best for your average domestic traveller. With its bright colors, it's almost like they drew inspiration from somewhere like Ikea and it's developing into a good consumer brand (another thing most smaller lodging houses have no idea about). In Africa, I wouldn't stay in places where your average domestic traveller would stay because it wouldn't be either safe or clean.