Is it normal to haggle for the price of cheap hotel rooms in China?

Question

On my recent month in China I stayed at many cheap hotels when I was somewhere with no backpacker hostel.

With the current development boom in China I find you mostly get fairly new hotels that look fancy from a distance but with many things broken or missing. Almost always you'll pay less than the prices on display in the lobby.

I paid between 50 and 70 RMB (CNY) most of the time. One time I paid 100 RMB.

But in my very last hotel in a non-tourist city in Inner Mongolia I visited several hotels all in the hundreds or at least over one hundred. It was dark and below zero and I was tired and on foot. The people at the hotel had already offered me a lower price than the starting price, but it was still a bit high if I didn't want to use the ATM again before crossing the border so I offered a lower price and it was accepted.

In this case the hotel looked fancy and at first the room looked fancy but it had enough problems that I thought I still paid more for it than at other hotels.

But the point of all this is, should I have been bargaining over the price of the hotels the whole time I was in China? Is this what Chinese people do? Is it expected?

I'll be back in China soon so it will be handy to know.

Answer 1

Many prices in China are negotiable.
Whether hotels will negotiate probably depends on local competition and attitude and instructions given to staff.

Over about 15 visits to China I tend to stay either in hostels if backpacking or hotels when in medium+ Chinese cities.

50 to 70 RMB is a reasonably low price - It's what I'd probably expect for a single bed room with shared bathroom.
If its for a room of your own with double bed and desk and internet and bathroom of some sort. Say 1 to 2 star +. then I'd expect more like 120-150 - ...

I stayed in a Shenzhen hotel that was modestly priced for Shenzhen - about 150 RMB. There were cheaper available but in terms of overall value for money and facilities this represented reasonable value for money. I got the price via an internet deal. When I wished to extend my stay no amount of reasoning would convince them to match the internet price - so if you had walked in the door and haggled you would presumably have also been unsuccessful.