Shanghai Garden Hotel | A representative of Shanghai's French flair

Before liberation, this was the French Club. The east-west elongated old building has been preserved and now serves as the main entrance to the Garden Hotel. The not overly complex Baroque-style architecture connects to the towering new main building of the hotel behind it, creating a unique opening statement among the old western-style hotel buildings in the center of Shanghai. This is an unmistakable French style. Today, the hotel has been open for 31 years. Even though the hotel's management is by Japan's Okura Group, and Japanese capital from Nomura Securities also played a significant role in the hotel's construction, Shanghai's old state-owned enterprise Jinjiang Group still casts a very strong local presence behind it. The room didn't give me a love-at-first-sight impression. But after staying, the proper service and solid hardware standards gradually wore away my stubbornness. Especially considering the quite reasonable price-performance ratio here—a deluxe room for 700+/night. And the basic room type: superior room, is generally in the range of 500-600/night, which is much cheaper compared to similar hotels in the vicinity. -