Suwon, South Korea Hotel Rooms at the Independent

This is a very nice hotel. I stayed there two weeks. The staff is friendly and polite. The Chinese restaurant inside the hotel is excellent, but very expensive. There are many Korean restaurants within walking distance, like Korean BBQ and Korean style shabu-shabu. The hotel exterior is a bit old and dusty, the inside is clean and comfort. The standard room is a bit small and the air-conditioner is very close to bed and desk. In the second week, I switched to the deluxe double room, which is my recommendation.

Our choice to stay in Suwon instead of Seoul enabled us to see more places and experience a place with more local flare and less foreigners. The Hotel staff were very accommodating, even with the language barrier they did their best to make our stay very pleasant. They offered us another room on the quieter side of the hotel even though the room we were in was just fine.

We loved our stay. It was a small apartment, with bedroom, office, living/kitchen, couch,a great TV, free internet, overhead lights and lamps for any lighting level, and windows that open. The kitchen had full cooking facilities, a hot pot, big refrigerator, and a small laundry machine. There were a skillet, saucepans, dishes, cutlery, and glassware. They even had dish soap and laundry soap in the kitchen. A really nice feature is the built-in water filtration system that gives you good water without buying bottled. It had a small dining table and two chairs as well. The bathroom was a reasonable size, with a great shower and full size towels, along with big bottles of shampoo and shower gel, and a hair dryer--also multiple lighting options. The bedroom had a lot of storage space, windows that open, good room-darkening drapes, and a wall mounted alarm clock/lighting system that we didn't have time to figure out. The air conditioner was excellent, with wall or remote control options. The bed was very comfortable, with nice bedding and good pillows. Even though the street below was fairly busy , once we closed the windows noise was minimal--we didn't hear any from within the building. The price included a small but good breakfast buffet; it had coffee, juice, cereals, bread, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, ham, bacon, yogurt, fresh and canned fruits...soup, rice, seaweed, etc. The checkin and checkout were a snap, and they had a secure parking facility.

The hotel lobby is very small, & the whole hotel looks like Motel. Not worth it to compare with the hotel room rate.

Overall good experience in the Suite A. Staff speaks very minimum English, but the Hotel Manager Jerry speaks good English and is very helpful. The staff are very nice and offered to help send us to the bus stop which was about 5 mins walk away as we had elderly and kids in our party. Very nice and cosy place for a few days and to visit Everland conveniently.

Apparently a converted "love hotel" but overall an excellent choice. Room was spacious with great AC (beware other hotels with shared AC in the summer). Free water, and other non-alcoholic beverages, were provided at checkin as well as with every room servicing. Laundry service made a week long stay much easier. From ICN take bus to ibis hotel and walk 12,000 KRW). The mattresses were too firm by European or American standards but that is to be expected in all of Asia. Breakfast was not great, but not bad (not comparable to Scandinavian hotels for example); it was on par with any standard US hotel chain breakfast. Free scheduled shuttle to Samsung (~4000 KRW taxi if you skip the shuttle). ~5400 KRW taxi to Suwon station (~2000 KRW train ticket to Seoul station, but 45m). When staying in this area I will book here again. Related: rent a phone with unlimited data for ~5000 KRW per day at ICN (guaranteed you will not regret it).

I stayed the hotel for 5 nights in July for business trip. It was so good to stay there with my co-worker. I would like to recommend this hotel if you stay less than 5 nights because they don`t have much space to keep your luggage. Except that, most of things are very nice.

Everything is automated. Very Clean and neat. Staffs are great.