A hotel for high fliers

Udo H. Doring, general manager of The Longemont Shanghai. Photos provided to China Daily

All of the hotel's rooms offer a panoramic view of Shanghai.

Hotel profile | Shanghai

With its convenient location and guest rooms from the 27th floor, The Longemont Shanghai is favored by international companies and business travelers. Yang Yijun reports.

With its golden location and prime meeting, incentive, conference and exhibition (MICE) facilities, The Longemont Shanghai has been the first choice of many international companies and business travelers since it opened five years ago.

Located on the city's West Yan'an Road, The Longemont Shanghai offers convenient access to major business centers, exhibition venues, the city's airports (the runways of Hongqiao Airport can be seen from the guest rooms) and Hongqiao Railway Station, the terminal for high-speed trains.

"Our guest rooms start on the 27th floor, therefore, every room has a view," Udo H. Doring, the hotel's general manager, says. All the 511 guestrooms on the 53-story hotel offer stunning views of the city's skyline. Guests can enjoy the panoramic view of Shanghai not only from guest rooms, but also from the 30-meter swimming pool, well-equipped gym facilities and luxurious spa on the 26th floor.

Guest rooms typically feature over-sized designer bathtubs with a city view and a specially prepared pillow menu, in addition to 42-inch plasma TVs and an iPod docking station.

The hotel has one of the largest meeting spaces in the Puxi area, including its 928 square meter ballroom, which can accommodate 1,200 people, and 10 additional function rooms for smaller groups of up to 150 people.

"All our function rooms have daylight. It's our selling point," Doring says.

"You can get a feeling of stress going into a function room where there is no daylight, which is the case in a lot of other five-star hotels," he says.

With plenty of experience handling large functions, hotel employees are not only proficient at setting up the ballroom so it has different themes, but can tidy up within an hour for the next function.

The hotel has seven restaurants and bars, offering all kinds of gourmet options including the contemporary and relaxing Amici, which features traditional Italian food and good wine; the Japanese restaurant Tenya, highlighting premier tuna dishes; and Royal China, where you can savor authentic Cantonese dim sum. The hotel also boasts a cozy and intimate cigar bar, the CO2 Cigar Lounge, where connoisseurs can puff on a wide selection of the world's finest cigars.

"Since we are an independent hotel, our staff are more friendly and flexible. We have to do whatever we can to show our Chinese hospitality," Doring says.

Doring operates a unique "GM Table" at which employees such as housekeepers and security staff meet and talk over lunch, which is an effective tool of communication between departments.

"We communicate by having enough trust and confidence to point out things we don't agree with or have problems with. It works pretty well both ways," he says.

The hotel has recently joined www.worldhotels.com, an online reservation system with a global portfolio of nearly 450 independent hotels, to offer more channels for reservations.