Shangri La Ulaanbaatar

If you travel to Ulaanbaatar, you don’t need to spend too much time researching on where to stay — the Shangri-La Hotel in the city centre is a no-brain choice. For the past many years, I’ve stayed and/or dined at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore (where the first Shangri-La Hotel was founded by the super-rich Asian Kuok families, who also happened to be my former employer), London, and of course Hong Kong. The Shangri-La Ulaanbaatar is no difference from its five-star sister hotels elsewhere. At the second when you step into the lobby, you may be surprised how familiar everything feels like — the layout of lobby floor, background music, and even the unique Shangri-La indoor fragrance. Hotel staff are nice and speak very good English, and there is a Chinese restaurant called Hutong where you can even find Peking duck in Mongolia. I have free and exclusive access to the Club Lounge where you can have an awesome 360 degree view of the city centre. Everything from the "State House", aka the central government office building, to ancient temples or modern public libraries, and the first Irish bar in Mongolia (located in “walking street for bars and restaurants”), are all within your sight -- and walk too. Traffic in Ulaanbaatar is not so desirable, so walking can actually save you a lot of time. The only small complaint about the hotel is still about traffic. It's hard to find taxi in the morning, so you shall arrange cars in advance.

Service was below par for an international 5 star hotel, staff clearly cannot cope with the demands of international standards. There is a lot of inefficiencies like waiting for them to bring an extra bed and waiting 2 hrs for staff to open interconnecting door for my family. To TOP it all, my Son got food poisoning from the buffet at the hotel, a very bad experience. They don't deserve 5 stars