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Built to accommodate the overflow from its sister hotel the Grand InterContinental (a few hundred metres away at the other end of the COEX centre), this giant hotel overlooks the Buddhist temple of Bongeun-sa, which is well worth crossing the road for. A full range of meeting and conference facilities is offered. For more on the monster COEX mall, see our review of Grand InterContinental. The room rates here are somewhat cheaper than at the Grand.
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Formerly the Swiss Grand hotel, the Grand Hilton isn’t in or near any of Seoul’s major business districts. It’s about a 10- minute taxi ride from Sinchon, the student quarter, but it does offer a more relaxing ambience than most competing hotels due to its location in a park-like area backing on to a mountainside. The Grand Hilton has ballrooms, meeting rooms and a full-scale conference centre, as well as serviced apartments. Its Babalu nightclub features karaoke rooms.
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Spectacularly sited on the slopes of Mount Namsan, conventional wisdom has it that this is Seoul’s finest hotel, but you need to take a shuttle bus or taxi to get virtually anywhere from here. Many complain that the rooms are cramped, but the views from the top floors are unsurpassed. The nightclub, JJ Mahoney’s, is popular with the well-heeled crowd, but some of the young ladies here are reputedly ‘working girls’. The French grill restaurant and sake bar are recommended. Should you feel energetic, the jogging tracks in Namsan Park across the road beckon. They were voted the second best in Asia by the Asian Wall Street Journal. The hotel’s ballrooms are the frequent setting for high-profile conferences, events and entertainments.
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Located in the giant COEX exhibition centre, this is an extremely handy situation if you’re doing business in southern Seoul. For shopping and entertainment, the COEX mall in the basement comes complete with a department store, shops, restaurants, clubs, a cineplex, an aquarium, an airport link and even a kimchi (pickled condiment) museum. This giant hotel has full conference facilities and a famous rooftop restaurant, Table 34. For kitsch with your dish, the Italian restaurant even provides trained opera singers to serenade you while you dine.
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Despite its humble facilities, the Hamilton is that rare beast—a foreigner-focused, mid-priced Seoul hotel. There is no bar, but this Itaewon landmark is set in the centre of the expatriate entertainment zone, so there are plenty of boozers and clubs within a couple of minutes’ walk. The hotel does offer four meeting rooms for business, and dining is taken care of by the Ho Lee Chow restaurant, probably the best place in town for North Americanstyle Chinese food.
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