Grand Hyatt Shanghai

China
Asia

The Experience

To stay at this über-mod hotel is to experience the mind-boggling Shanghai boom without even leaving your hotel room. Set in the burgeoning Pudong business and financial center, the Bund and old Shanghai may lie across the river, but their history is a million miles away. Instead, six elevators stand ready to whisk you to the lobby on the 54th floor in 47 seconds flat. A literal and figurative symbol of the dizzying heights to which Shanghai has climbed, the Grand Hyatt—which runs from the 53rd to 87th floors of the soaring Jin Mao Tower in Pudong—is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "Highest Hotel in the World."

The Rooms

Who needs wall decorations when there's such a sweeping view? Rooms take full advantage of their sky-high position, many with floor-to-ceiling windows, (some with two full walls of them!) looking out over the Bund or the river. The hotel may be all glass and all modern, but the decor lets you know you're in China. Tang Dynasty poems in gold calligraphy on antique Chinese red lacquer screens form the headboards, while Ming-style wedding cabinets house the televisions. Less Oriental are the Italian custom-made desks with leather-faced cabinets and marble bathrooms with towers of three showerheads and fogless mirrors. The top eight floors belong to the Grand Club, with its two-story-high lounge and private butlers, and the 2,982-square-foot Chairman Suite nods to Shanghai's European heritage with its art deco decor, alabaster sconces and double columns of French limestone that echo the architecture on the Bund.

The Service

The efficient staff are multilingual and ever-present—the Lobby Manager is on duty 24 hours, as is the business center, in case you need more business cards printed. For long-haul-guest arrivals, the hotel prepares rooms for a midday nap, curtains drawn, and you can request a hard or a soft mattress.

The Highlights

Restaurant choices here are as dizzying as that elevator ascent: In a cigar bar, wine bar, single malt bar and a wealth of restaurants, you can get Cantonese shark's fin soup, brick-oven pizza, a Shanghainese hot pot at 3 a.m. or sing karaoke. But high on the topmost 87th floor are the kickers: the indoor "sky pool" and the Cloud 9 lounge and bar, both complete with 360-degree views of the city.

 

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