The Peninsula is just amazing, the room is huge and beautiful, the bathroom is beatifully done. The luxury shops at base level/ground level also makes the penisula stand out from other luxury hotels in Beijing. Enjoy live piano/classical music while taking a tea break and also the hotel restaurant Jing is highly recommended! The autosphere is beautiful and the food is the best I've had in a chinese restaurant. The breakfast is also great, with a wide range of western and chinese food. Some people might say the peninsula beijing is not on the same standard as the peninsular in Hong Kong or else where, but at the same time, remember it is also a lot cheaper. Where else can you find a great 5 star hotel for less than ?150? you can easily spend that on some 3 star hotels in other cities!

At first glance upon entering the Lobby the evening I checked in, I thought this would be equivalent to both Hong Kong and the Beverly Hills properties in terms of service/quality and overall impression. I was wrong. Service quality is just not up to standard of their other properties. No one seemed willing to go out of their way to help or assist. The thing I love about the other Peninsula properties i have stayed at is that they almost anticipate my needs before I even ask. This was not the case at this property. The standard rooms are also very small. Free bottled water comes once a day in the evening around 8pm - and they are small half bottles so you ould wait all day to have something to drink in your room again. One one day, i had the privacy button turned on in my room and when i came back tomy room, the maid was actually in my room cleaning it! They need better training. I had left some valuables out in the room and was not happy about this. Their wi-fi service was slow and intermittent, althought complimentary. The hotel was virtually empty (as were many other Beijing hotels at this time) and yet the hotel was unwilling to give me an upgrade (for a fee) to the club floor. The hotel airport transfers were sub par as well -- the greeters at the airport were disorganized and made us walk around the parking garage with them to find the car instead of keeping us in a pick up spot to wait for the car to come to us. When it did arrive, it was an OLD model mercedes which compared to other hotels like the Mandarin Oriental or Regent, was very below standard. I would not use their car service again for the amount of money paid (about $100 each way). Doormen were pretty god for getting taxis. Restaurant Jing was a good breakfast buffet but on the expensive side - $40 a person. Overall, i would not recommend this property, especially for those of you who regularly stay at Peninsula Hotels. I will stay at other luxury properties on my subsequent trips to Beijing. There are several newer properties like the Grand Hyatt, and the Grand Millenium, as well as the Regent.

Some friends and I stayed at the Peninsula Beijing for 3 nights in May 2008. It was the first stop of a three week trip throughout Asia and the Peninsula Beijing set a pretty high standard for the rest of our accommodations to live up to. Although the bathrooms aren't as luxurious as those found at other Peninsula properties, this hotel had many outstanding amenities. Check -in was quite fast and efficient. The check-in person was incredibly helpful. He was kind enough to exchange some dollars while we dropped off our bags and hailed us a cab so we could hit the nightlife before it got too late. The hotel lobby is nice and the lower levels have quite the shopping selection (all high-end boutiques: Louis Vitton, Cartier, et al). The lobby bar seemed a bit out of place but was nevertheless fun. One night they even had jazz flute! The breakfast was great as was room service. The only negative we noticed was the airport transfer service. The car we were taken in was quite old, worn and out dated. Other than that, the Peninsula Beijing is in a great location and provides wonderful amenities. Not quite as luxurious as the Beverly Hills location or Hong Kong location, but for Beijing, it's at the higher end.

Sub-standard to Peninsula properties in Bankok and Hong Kong. Rooms ok, Peninsula-kind touches present. However staff not too professional: porters shouting at each other over who will is to fetch my luggage for 5 min in the main lobby while customer (me) standing right next to them. Hotel transfer to airport Mercedes or R-R? How about a 10+ years old Audi?! Swimming pool currently closed "for renovation". Overall OK but defintely not excellent.

Five star hotels face a lot of trouble with their clients because in the service industries customer satisfaction is always tied to expectations. And let’s face it, it’s a tough mix to master: courtesy, consideration, and going the extra mile for a customer without being obsequious or intrusive. It’s a wonder that it happens anywhere. The expectations are that much higher at five star hotels’ price points. A customer naturally expects something for what he or she is paying. But a number of hotels I have been to, particularly in Asia, have succeeded in this mix to a degree that stuns. The Peninsula Beijing, unfortunately, is not one of them. It is, by far, the poorest excuse for a five star hotel I have ever stayed in. Let’s start with a few lesser details. First, the rooms. I was upgraded to the largest non-suite sized room at the club level. Most Americans will probably find the room unbearably small. Other reviewers have complained about the cigarette smoke in the nonsmoking rooms. The Peninsula has yet to remedy that situation. The sheets in my room reeked of smoke, an error that could have been avoided easily by more attentive management. I will admit that the bathroom was a decent size. And there are cool switches for every light you can think of to the side of the bed, as well as a large plasma TV, though these days it’s pretty rare to find a top property in Japan or China that doesn’t have one in every room. You will need to ask the hotel for an adapter if you’re using appliances with American voltage. Asking the hotel for anything, however, will usually involve a tip, even if it’s something you’d ordinarily expect a room to have. There’s a scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm (Episode 40 for fans) where Larry stays at the Regency in New York and has to tip the guy who fixes the faulty air conditioning. That’s more or less what service is like at the Peninsula. On to the food. Breakfast at the Jing restaurant is simply dreadful. The spread compares unfavorably to a number of four stars I’ve been to, and the quality of the food is simply appalling. The pastries, for example, are uniformly damp, almost stale. There’s a good omelette station, but I haven’t been to many hotels that have flubbed an omelette. The restaurant itself lacks a view and is dark, so you kind of feel like you’ve been transported to a high school during a brownout. And then there’s the service. The staff at Jing looks and acts severely depressed, and can be rude to boot. I witnessed a waitress practically flinging coffee at an American customer because she asked for hot coffee after getting a cold cup. Jing is the worst breakfast experience I have ever had at a hotel. As other reviewers have noted, check-in is uncoordinated. When I arrived, my bags were lying around the reception area completely unattended to. After I finished check-in, I had to locate a bellhop to find my bags. By nearly any measure I can think of, the Peninsula is a disappointment. Ultimately, however, the joylessness of the hotel is its greatest drawback. Its employees’ lack of enthusiasm is contagious. And unless it’s important to you to stay in a hotel that sells overpriced designer goods in its basement (that’s a draw?), you’ll save` money and have a better experience at just about any other top hotel in the city.