Sub-standard to Peninsula properties in Bankok and Hong Kong. Rooms ok, Peninsula-kind touches present. However staff not too professional: porters shouting at each other over who will is to fetch my luggage for 5 min in the main lobby while customer (me) standing right next to them. Hotel transfer to airport Mercedes or R-R? How about a 10+ years old Audi?!
Swimming pool currently closed "for renovation". Overall OK but defintely not excellent.

We stayed at the Penn for three nights and thoroughly enjoyed our stay however there were some pluses and minuses to this hotel that we wanted to share:

Pluses:
We told them it was our anniversary and they had a free bottle of wine in our room upon our arrival---Nice touch!
The Club Floor is worth the extra money and the breakfast is fabulous.
Our room was great, top floor and away from the elevators.
Wonderful location, close to shopping, restaurants, food and sights!
Very helpful and attentive staff, Francos on the club floor is superb!
Fabulous piano player in the lobby, enjoyed listening to her.

Minuses:
We stayed directly under the club floor and could hear people walking around.
The shower is not properly sealed and leaks water on to the floor.
The Club Floor is a little anal about removing glasses from the floor.
ATM machine frequently runs out of money.

Would we stay there again? Yes, we would and would recommend the hotel to our friends. So, the pluses heavily outweigh the minuses!

After reading all the great reviews we were expecting something magical. Don't be fooled this is a tired, ageing hotel with rooms looking more like a 2 star property than 5 star. Definately not a world class hotel by any stretch of the imagination. Beds were so hard that you might as well of slept on the floor, Bathrooms also in poor condition.

BEWARE DON'T BE FOOLED GO ELSEWHERE!

My husband and I had a wonderful 5-night stay at Beijing's The Peninsula in mid-March 2008. The hotel’s very fancy lobby houses not only a classy bar area, complete with live piano and violin music, but also an upscale mall with dozens of stores like Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Channel, and similar boutiques. Fortunately, it also has one of the hottest dining spots in town: "Jing" restaurant. In addition to delicious dinners, Jing's breakfast buffet is tremendous. It serves everything from Western-style bacon and eggs, to Chinese favorites, like dumplings and noodles. The food and service were impeccable.

The Peninsula's rooms are spacious and elegant. Our room (not a suite) had almost 400 square feet of living space - it was huge! The hotel also offers free internet, awesome plasma TV and lots of other free amenities. Very luxurious.

My only complaint, and it's not a big one, is that our view from the 9th floor overlooked nothing but the construction going on in the pool area behind the hotel. No biggie, the good at this hotel far outweighs the bad.

The hotel is also centrally located. It's 2 blocks from WangFuJing Rd - big shopping area with late night eateries. It’s also about 1.5 miles from Tiananmen Square. It's a nice walk to T.Square, but cab it if you're in a hurry.

Lastly, the concierge service was stellar. First, the concierge desk was always well staffed - 5 or 6 people at the desk. Second, the desk closed only from 11:30 pm to about 6 am. We don't speak Mandarin, so we relied heavily on their help. Each staff member spoke English, and was professional, courteous and never uttered the words "no" or "we can't help you." They recommended restaurants and attractions, gave us Beijing travel tips, ran out to purchase our night-train tickets to Shanghai, and happily wrote our destinations in Chinese symbols to hand to our non-English speaking taxi drivers. They were invaluable. Best concierge service I've experienced in a while. We highly recommend The Peninsula.