Hotel Jen Beijing review: Leave boring behind

Considering that I’m ethnically Chinese, I am woefully under-travelled when it comes to visiting China. The very first time I visited was way back in 2014 to Shanghai and only for a really short 3 days. This time when the chance came up to visit Beiiing and review the newly opened Hotel Jen Beijing, I said yes pretty quickly.

I’ve checked out Hotel Jen in Singapore when it first opened, so I was familiar with their quirky fun style, and while I was expecting some of that in Hotel Jen Beijing, I have to say I was very impressed with the hotel’s facilities and how it is equipped for the modern business person. It’s definitely not your typical large chain hotel stay.

Thanks again to Hotel Jen for inviting me up to Beijing and showing me around this city! Here’s a bit more about Hotel Jen Beijing and what I liked about staying there, and thanks for their help in directing me to get to the Great Wall of China in Mutianyu.

THE LOCATION

Hotel Jen Beijing is located in Guomao of the Chaoyang district, the business area of Beijing, about 45 mins drive from the airport. The hotel is connected to the China World building so you have an entire mall at your disposal without having to step outside.

You are within walking distance to the nearest subway station Guomao – it’s about 5-10 minutes but you can cut through the shopping mall which is directly connected to the subway (except on early weekend mornings, then you have to detour by outside). Guomao station connects you directly to Line 1 (notable stations include Tiananmen, Wangfujing – useful for tourists) and line 10.

THE ROOM

A standard room in Hotel Jen is known as the Jen 40 which as its name implies is 40sqm. They do have larger rooms as well – Jen 75 and the suite Jen 150.

I had a large King bed as well as a nice couch area. The typical hotel desk was very much smaller and streamlined compared to some of these monstrosities I’ve seen, sufficient for anyone looking to get a little work done, and with a comfy chair to boot. Mine was flush up against the window – space saving but it also meant I couldn’t quite get up to the full length glass windows.

I loved that this room was definitely built for the modern day person because it had a gazillion sockets because everyone has a ton of gadgets to charge – that means no hunting for the table lamp socket because you need an extra plug! There are sockets on both sides of the bed and by the table, and better still they had USB outlets as well so you don’t even have to pull out your adaptor.

And of course because it’s Hotel Jen, there are these quirky little small touches throughout the room, from little grass bunnies to dinosaur floaties for your bath tub!

My toilet was really spacious, with a fabulous Toto toilet bowl with all the sprays, a separate shower area and even a bathtub.

Do note that each room’s configuration is slightly different even if they are of the same size – other media who were also in the Jen 40 rooms had a much smaller bathroom or no bathtub, so I suspect my room might be a Jen 45 or maybe a Skyline room which is also available on the website.

THE FACILITIES

This is the bit that really impressed me – for fitness buffs or those who just want to squeeze in a workout or two on their holidays, there are 2 entire floors of 24-hour gym facilities and equipment for you in what they call the Trainyard. The hotel actually has a gym membership available for office workers in the area, but for hotel guests you have free access to most of these facilities and fitness classes as part of your stay here!

I don’t usually bother exercising on the go (walking the Great Wall of China was way more of a workout than I bargained for), but on level 5 there’s a great heated pool for those who want to swim, and rooms full of spin machines, treadmills and other gym equipment for those who want to work out. On the 4th level are rooms that are used to conduct fitness classes which guests can also sign up for, as well as an entire boxing ring. Like, wow.

The hotel signed us up for something called Nightcrawler, complete with DJ and disco lights but you don’t notice any of that after intense 1 hour circuit session. There’s a morning series called Daybreak that focuses on Yoga instead.

Also impressive are the co-working facilities – Proto:type is a digital nomad’s dream with lots of cosy nooks and free flow coffee and tea for a fixed daily fee. If you need more professional spaces to conduct your business, you can also rent their meeting rooms and boardrooms

DINING

We also need to talk about the food here. The Beersmith Gastropub on level 1 serves up some excellent nosh – a very excellent burger . The pork ribs were also crowd pleasers, but what I found super cool was the beer milkshake, where the house brew is blended with your choice of chocolate, strawberry or vanilla ice cream. It sounds like it should be gross, but they’ve actually perfected the balance of ice cream and beer and it was delicious!

We got to poke around the staff and brewing areas and learned that they were making a Mooncake beer for midautumn festival. They were still testing it out when we we were there, but definitely pop around during that period because it just sounds so bizarre! Right now they have the pineapple beer, which honestly wasn’t pineappley or fruity enough for my liking, but pretty easy to drink.

Breakfast in the mornings takes place at San Wu Tang on Level 2 and has quite a decent spread of local and western food. The must tries include the Jian Bing, a fried and typical Beijing breakfast. Also, make sure you pick up a bottle of the Suan Nai, which translates into Sour Milk but really is a sweetish yoghurt but is also another very typical Beijing thing to have.

I got lazy on my last evening and ordered a bowl of beef noodle soup up to the room – the room service menu isn’t the largest but it’s enough for a lazy day and pretty prompt.

Room Rate

Thanks to the lovely Hotel Jen folk who took very good care of us throughout the trip! If you’re interested in checking out Hotel Jen Beijing, check out the promotions that they have on right now. Room rates start from around 900 RMB/night and there are also a bunch of interesting packages that you might want to check out too. They have a pretty decent occupancy rate considering they are a very new – just about a month old at the time that I visited!

This trip and accommodation was sponsored by Hotel Jen Beijing, all opinions in this article are my own.