China Hotels for Foreigners: Booking & Registration

You can book local Chinese hotels as well as international chains. Bring your passport for check-in; the hotel handles the required police registration.

If your dates are flexible, check the China public holidays guide for listed festival dates, confirmed national breaks and arrangements that remain pending.

A HanTing guest room with a large curtained window and seating beside it. — Queen Room With View at HanTing, Shanghai Lingang Wanda Plaza. A room’s window details are worth reading alongside its photos.

Booking with a foreign passport

China’s accommodation measures say local authorities and booking platforms should not use qualification requirements to prevent hotels from hosting overseas guests.

If a listing says “mainland Chinese ID only”, or the hotel says it cannot register your passport, ask the booking platform to clarify this with the property before booking.

Guests Accepted: Guests from all countries/regions are welcome at this property. — What an accepting listing looks like. This HanTing property lists guests from all countries and regions as welcome. This is the property’s stated policy, rather than a separate permit you need to obtain.

Getting to know Chinese hotel chains

Hanting (汉庭) is H World’s budget chain. The group’s midrange chain is JI Hotel (全季), whose style centres on simple interiors, bamboo and wood tones, and tea in the lobby.

Atour (亚朵) sits in the upper midrange. The full brand name matters when comparing listings: Atour Light is its midrange brand, while Atour S is positioned higher, in the upscale category.

Brand positioning: H World and Atour. Design: JI Hotel’s brand guide (Chinese).

Trip.com is one English-language option for booking Chinese hotels, including these domestic chains.

Room windows and laundry

Some hotel rooms have windows facing an indoor corridor rather than outside, so a window does not necessarily mean natural daylight. These may be labelled “Window faces hallway” or 内窗.

HanTing Queen Room with curtains covering the window; the listing describes it as facing a hallway. — Internal window 内窗
The curtain doesn’t tell the whole story. This Queen Room is listed as “Window faces hallway”; the photo alone doesn’t show what is outside it.
Photo and listing: HanTing, Shanghai Lingang Wanda Plaza.

Queen Room listing: Window faces hallway. — Internal window 内窗
The curtain doesn’t tell the whole story. This Queen Room is listed as “Window faces hallway”; the photo alone doesn’t show what is outside it.
Photo and listing: HanTing, Shanghai Lingang Wanda Plaza.

Wanting Hotel Special Queen Room with a bed and a wall mirror; the listing specifies no window. — No window 无窗
This Special Queen Room is explicitly listed as “No window”. The rectangular feature on the wall is a mirror, not an outside view.
Photo and listing: Wanting Hotel, Guangzhou.

Special Queen Room listing: No window. — No window 无窗
This Special Queen Room is explicitly listed as “No window”. The rectangular feature on the wall is a mirror, not an outside view.
Photo and listing: Wanting Hotel, Guangzhou.

Self-service laundry 自助洗衣

Self-service washers and dryers are available even at some budget hotels, including Hanting branches. Atour offers free laundry facilities. Look for “self-service laundry” in the facilities list: “laundry service” can also mean washing charged by the item.

Three dryers stacked above three washing machines in the HanTing laundry room, with laundry baskets beside them. — Wash below, dry above
This HanTing laundry room has separate washers and dryers, with baskets alongside. It shows the facilities available at this branch; the photo doesn’t establish whether use is free.
Photo: HanTing, Shanghai Lingang Wanda Plaza, via Trip.com.

Photos and listing excerpts sourced from Trip.com on September 15, 2026. Room descriptions and guest policies are specific to the properties shown.

Guesthouses and private stays

At a guesthouse or holiday apartment, your host can handle police registration for you. Once they’ve registered your stay, you don’t need to make a separate trip to the police station.

If you’re staying with friends or family, they can help with registration too. For a stay in a private home, you or your host need to complete it within 24 hours of arrival. Local online services can save a trip to the station.

Travellers’ accounts give a less uniform picture of how this works on the ground. In a January 2026 discussion, one traveller said their hosts registered both of their Tujia homestays. Another described a self-check-in apartment in Beijing where the owner did not know which channel to use; the police later called and the registration had to be resubmitted.

Some visitors also report staying with friends or relatives without registering and never being contacted. In a June 2025 discussion, that experience appeared alongside a host’s account of police calling after a missed deadline on an earlier visit. These are individual accounts; how registration is handled varies by host and location.

If a hotel refuses check-in

If the issue is registering a foreign passport, ask the hotel to contact its local police registration office for assistance. For a booking whose guest policy said foreign guests were accepted, contact the booking platform about the discrepancy and ask it to arrange a resolution with the property.

You can also call 12367, the immigration service hotline, for policy advice or to report an accommodation problem. The official accommodation measures specify round-the-clock Chinese and English service and coordination with the 12345 local government hotline.