I started searching for hotels three months ago and found this hotel, SSAW Boutique Hotel, with reasonable price and good reviews. As we would be visiting Yuyuan Garden right after checking-in, I selected this hotel for its proximity to Yuyuan Garden. 

After 50 minutes on the taxi from the airport, we arrived at this pretty Shanghai Accommodation. The interior of the lobby was nicely decorated, with a cosy lounge area and small fountain. I found the decor quite “Bali-Themed Resort” Style.

When we entered our hotel room, I was surprised how big it was!

SSAW Boutique Hotel Room – 2 Beds And A Sofa Bed

I had booked the “Executive Family” room thinking to have enough beds for all of us. However, the photos didn’t show that the “Large Double Bed” was quite big (bigger than queen size) and sufficient for Dar, Me and Ling. There was a single bed beside it and a sofa bed at the other half of the room. 

We felt that the room was too big and Vin didn’t feel comfortable with sleeping on the other side of the room far from others. Thus, the sofa bed was meant for Dar. However, after testing it out, the sofa bed was harder and wasn’t as comfortable as the bed. We wanted us to be more refreshed in the morning for an entire day of sight-seeing. 

Thus, Dar, Ling and me slept on one bed while Vin slept on the single bed. 

Later, we wanted to change the room-type for our second stay for 1 night on the last day of our trip. However, changing it to a smaller room (“Family Room”) would instead be more expensive than our current booked price (due to our early booking 3 months ago). Also, for a family room, they had only a smaller double bed and one sofa bed (we already found the sofa bed not so comfy). Thus, we stay put with the type of the room. 

SSAW Boutique Hotel – Bathroom

The bathroom only had showers and it was transparent with a screen. However, no matter how we tried to pull, the screen doesn’t fully cover. We could see some parts of the person through it. I’m not sure this would work if we are not close family members.

Self-bought Tub For Toddler

Our toddler doesn’t like to shower directly with the shower head. Thus, we brought our own inflatable swim tub from Intex. It fits into the shower area exactly. 

View From Our Room SSAW Boutique Hotel – Amenities

They have a small kitchenette area for us to boil water, tea or coffee. Bottles of drinking water and packets of tea, coffee and sugar were also provided.

Also, the mini-bar was free and stocked with drinks and snacks! (never ever had this from our extensive experiences staying in hotels). They even had some free supper for guests at night but we did not take those and thus did not know how it was like.

There was a safe for us to keep our valuables and a wardrobe with all the essentials (slippers, hangers etc.)

They also provided high-quality bath lotion, shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom, so we used those instead of our own.

Free Wi-Fi

The Wi-Fi worked well for most of the time. However, it didn’t work well when I used VPN (Have to use VPN in China as Instagram and Facebook is blocked). Thus, my images did not go through for Instagram when I tried uploading. In the end, I exceeded my data plan when I didn’t notice I was using my data plan instead of Wi-Fi. 

View From Our Room

The view from the hotel room was bad but we didn’t stay long in the room daily since we are out the whole day. Thus, it didn’t matter much to us.

SSAW Boutique Hotel Service

The front-desk staff were helpful with questions and the room was cleaned daily.

There was an information board provided at the lobby area with timings and directions to various places of attractions. We could ask the front desk to help us call a taxi if we need to go somewhere. There are no booking fees for taxis in China.

Service – Train Tickets Collection

Before the trip, we had already bought our train tickets online and opted for them to be delivered directly to the hotel for a small fee. When we arrived for check-in, we asked for our tickets and collected them from the front-desk staff.

More details on how we booked the train tickets at our Tips and Experiences post.

Accessibility to Shanghai Attractions

This hotel is very near to the Metro station and some attractions (Yuyuan Garden, People’s Square, Xintiandi and Nanjing Road). This proved to be useful when we couldn’t get a taxi back to the hotel after our dinner in Nanjing Street. We took the Subway instead. Alighting from the subway station (Yu Garden Subway Station), it is just a 2-5 minutes walk to the hotel. When it’s freezing cold at night and you had children with you, it was definitely a plus point!

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SSAW Boutique Hotel Breakfast

We enjoyed the buffet breakfast where there was a selection of Chinese and Western food. The seating arrangements were also quite unique with sofa type of seats and the usual table and chairs. There was ample space as when the main dining hall was full, we could move to a second dining hall. Baby chair was available for Ling.

Food – Chinese

For the food, I love that I could eat my fill since I have a restrictive diet. There were rice, tea leaves egg, veggies, porridge and meat dishes to go with porridge /fried rice. There was our favourite Chinese dim sum such as dumplings.

Food- Western

The Western selections were plenty too, with the usual fare like sausages, hash browns, hams, cheese, cereals and breads. They also had interesting desserts but the cake were a little too hard for Ling.

There was an omelette station where the chef was making different types of eggs – omelette, scrambled, sunny-side. Interestingly, there was a Chinese Noodles Section where Vin got his bowl of noodles fresh, with ingredients you choose yourself and hand to the chef to cook. There were a variety of tea and beverages to pick from – we could self-serve what we wanted. 

SSAW Boutique Hotel – Our Stay

We stayed there for three nights before leaving for Suzhou. After coming back from Hangzhou, we stayed there for 1 more night and left for Singapore on the next day.

Reason for the extra night: We did not want to go direct from Hangzhou to Shanghai Pudong Airport, in case there were transport delays causing us to miss our flight.

[ Summary ]

Overall, we enjoyed our stay there in SSAW Boutique Hotel Shanghai Bund and would recommend to fellow travelers.

Name of Hotel: SSAW Boutique Hotel Shanghai Bund
Address: No. 839 Renming Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai, China, 200000
How Much We Paid: CNY¥3750.30 (SGD$747) for 3 nights, CNY¥1250.10 (SGD$249) for 1 night.
Period of Stay: Mar 2018

Tip: Book at least three months in advance to enjoy a lower rate. By the time we travelled there, the room rate was very much higher!

Read More of our China 2018 Trip: 9-Day Family Travel Itinerary in China Shanghai, Suzhou & Hangzhou