Travel China Planner

Pan Pacific Hotels Group is set to have another hotel in China next year, when the 484-room Sheraton Suzhou Hotel and Towers will be rebranded as Pan Pacific Suzhou in January 2010.

The hotel is owned by Pan Pacific Hotels Group, which will now manage the hotel under its own name. The group also opened Pan Pacific Xiamen in August 2009.

Pan Pacific is a brand that has a portfolio of 18 hotels, resorts and serviced suites in North America and Asia.

The Sheraton Suzhou Hotel and Towers unveiled its new Towers Wing, which has 99 deluxe rooms and suites, earlier this year. Before its opening as Pan Pacific Suzhou in January, key areas will be identified for enhancements and upgrades that will align the hotel to the Pan Pacific brand standards.

According to A. Patrick Imbardelli, the president and CEO of Pan Pacific Hotels Group the rebranding and opening of Pan Pacific Suzhou will heighten the profile of the Pan Pacific brand and that of Pan Pacific Hotels Group in China.

A brand new 342-room hotel in Tianjin, which is scheduled to open in 2011, is next in the pipeline for the Group.

I was woken up by the guide shaking me and saying that we were about to leave. I hadn’t even packed.

I had a little bit of time so I headed back up to the room to sort out my crap attempt at packing. After that and a little lye down I headed over to the train station, I headed over to KFC (western food albeit crap). The train to Suzhou was one of the new high

One of the display boats at night

speed train and within 45 mins I arrived Suzhou. The guide had given us a phone number so after I little confusion. I got hold of him. He was rather shocked I had made it to Suzhou on my own, most people who travel with him must be retards, it’s so easy here.

The guide eventually knocked on the door and explained that there was a tourist expo going on tonight and that a number of people were heading down to watch, I said that I would meet them. Wish I didn’t bother, it was a little nippy and the show went on just a little to long, it was basically 20 decorated boats floating down the canal, the funniest thing was that we couldn’t get anywhere near it to start off with, a tourist expo but no tourists allowed near it.
Decorated dragon boat at night

After the expo it was MacDonalds time, I had a chicken sandwich. After food we headed over to a KTV bar, KTV stands for Karoke TV. Basically it consists of rooms of various sizes, each room has a karoke TV and microphones and an electronic machine to select the songs. You either rent the room for the night or by hour, if you rent it for the night you also get some free drinks. If you want more drinks you go up to a bar and order them, after last night I was not that up for it but it was quite funny.

When we first got there we walked past one room which was totally trashed by the last guests, it was so funny there must of been more than 1000 bits of popcorn on the floor, they had a permenant group of cleaners to clean up after people.

In the bar, one person took the order, another fetched the drinks, another took the money which was taken by another guy to the cashier who then came over with the change.

Back to the karoke, it was fun but no-one was really interested apart from the guide and his girlfriend (who was actually very good).  After a few hours I headed back to the hotel to get some decent sleep.