Amandayan Hotel

“Still excellent despite its age”

Situated on top of Lion Hill, Amandayan arguably has the best location in all of Lijiang, offering a panoramic view over the Lijiang Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site. While I'm not a big fan of the Old Town, as it's very commercialised with tacky shops selling mostly the same things, it's sti… Mais

Situated on top of Lion Hill, Amandayan arguably has the best location in all of Lijiang, offering a panoramic view over the Lijiang Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site. While I'm not a big fan of the Old Town, as it's very commercialised with tacky shops selling mostly the same things, it's still worth checking out and is just a short descent downhill. The hotel offers a highly recommended free morning tour to Zhongyi Market, an open-air food market in the Old Town frequented by locals. My biggest gripe with the hotel was the rooms. Amandayan is built in the style of a Nakhi village, the indigenous people of the region, and the 35 guest rooms are clustered into courtyards consisting of around 4 rooms. The base room is on the ground floor with direct courtyard access, while the Deluxe Suite is on the 2nd floor with views on both sides instead of one. Both room types have the exact same layout. We were upgraded to the Deluxe Suite, but unfortunately did not get one with the mountain view. The room was spacious (72m2) and gorgeously designed. But there were some major problems with the room, which were honestly very unfortunate and severely impacted our stay: - The wooden floor was extremely slippery, especially with the hotel slippers. I would literally glide on it. - For some reason, all the toiletries you would get were off-brand crap that were usually seen in 3-star hotels. - There were no universal sockets anywhere in the room, and the adapter the hotel gave me was also bad in quality. Charging was a pain throughout my stay. - No master switch by the bed: turndown service switched on all four lamps, which I then had to turn off manually, one by one. - Last but not least, a lot of guests reported that the music from bars in the Old Town could be heard late into the night. It was so loud that I could still hear it with earplugs on, although to be fair, it wasn't loud enough that I couldn't sleep. It would stop at around 12:15am. I also, in general, did not have a single night of good sleep there due to the high altitude (~2400m). I'd wake up multiple times throughout the night. The climate there was also very dry despite the humidifier placed in our room by the hotel. I woke up one night at 5:30am with a blocked nose that turned into a horrible nosebleed. This was not the hotel's fault of course, and when told them this they were horrified and gave me another humidifier, but it's an important point that future guests should consider. The breakfast had a good combination of Western classics and a ton of local dishes. The local dishes were intentionally toned down in terms of flavours and salt level to cater to a broader clientele, as per the hotel staff, which I'm not sure if I enjoyed. I'd typically love to try local dishes for breakfast whenever I travel, but I found myself gravitating towards pancakes and waffles for breakfast at Amandayan, which were outstanding. It's not that the Chinese dishes themselves were bad - we tried a rice noodle place recommended by the airport transfer chauffeur, and it was phenomenal. One of the best rice noodles I've had anywhere. The hotel's version was just too plain. The coffee there was really good though. We also had dinner at the hotel's Chinese restaurant and had the cured pork ribs hotpot. It was very good with outstanding service, but one set meal plus a drink ended up running us $200 USD, which was insane considering a similar meal would be at most $30-50 elsewhere. The biggest criticism of Amandayan online was that the service is not up to the usual Aman standards. This is my first Aman stay, so I can't benchmark the service level against other Amans. I found the service to be excellent but lacked personalisation. For example, the staff would not remember our names and preferences despite staying there for 4 nights (they did, in general, recognise us). Nevertheless, we were not difficult guests, and these things in general do not concern us. If the hotel can do it then it would be a nice surprise, no biggies if they can't. We were upgraded and checked into the room by 10:30am despite a more or less full house, which was nice. The hotel also had 24/7 butler service on WeChat/WhatsApp - I'm not sure if all Amans have this, but compared to other luxury properties from other brands, this is definitely a plus whenever a hotel has it, especially for introverts like us. Maybe our bars are too low, but if I drop the undue expectations that it's an Aman property and just benchmark the service against other luxury properties I've stayed in the past, the service deserves a 10/10. I also liked the fact that the hotel employed a lot of minorities who were local to Lijiang. Value is subjective, but for one of the cheapest Amans in their portfolio, the value was through the roof. FHR had a 4 for 3 promotion, and we paid about $700 USD per night. Granted that Amandayan is significantly more expensive than other local brands, I like the structured service that you can expect from international brands. Chinese brands can be a hit or miss in terms of the hard product and service level. Apart from Yangyun, the other 3 Chinese Amans have been getting some flak in recent years, and Amandayan is no exception. It's perhaps the least well-known/popular property in Aman's portfolio, judging by the number of followers they have on Instagram. I've very much enjoyed my 4-night stay at Amandayan, and would consider it a solid property despite its age and one of the top hotels in the whole of West/Southwest China.

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