Our Hotel was the China Southern Pearl, on the Southern approach to this huge airport. My last visit here was in 2015 & the place has certainly grown.
Our room was 4011, the Pearl only has 6 floors, it gave a view towards the Terminal & depending on ops/weather landers or departing traffic could be seen, again the intermittent nature of FR24 in China meant this kept you on you toes.
In previous visits here the group had access to the rook, but the 6th floor & roof were undergoing refurb, which was good & bad news. Bad news in that the roof on the hotel wasn’t useable, however they did allow access to the roof of another China Southern Building, weather permitting. If it rains there’s now cover but the view of the Southern half of the airport is hard to beat. That said you’re more to the left on this roof making reading landers on the right tricky & in bright sunshine reading the electronics is also tricky, but better than nothing.
The refurb of the 6th floor had also created a meeting room with a view towards the airport. It was ideally sized for 18 I suspect, but our group of 25 or so just about fitted in. Again depending on which side of the room you are depends how much concentration & patience is need to see the movements, especially landers, stuff on the cross taxiways can be read, there’s the obligatory wifi & a loo down the corridor. We retreated in here as & when the weather or laziness dictated. A great asset. As I said during our visit they were still testing the 6 Floor with Fire Alarm test & such so when in action I suspect it’d have to be booked & a fee would probably apply. As for the roof access whether that would available to individuals I’m not sure, sometimes there is an advantage to numbers. The glass is sloping & photography will possible would mean block the views of others while you’re taking the photo, so it was a number crunching exercise
Credit: Andy Vass