10 Best Shanghai Hotels — People's Square & Nanjing Road 2026

We open the Shanghai list with the most luxurious, best-located pick — the Shanghai Marriott Hotel City Centre, a 5-star tower in the heart of People's Square. It sits a 2-minute walk from People's Square metro Exit 17, where lines 1, 2 and 8 all meet, and you can walk to East Nanjing Road and The Bund from here. The lobby is up on floor 6 under a high ceiling and a crystal chandelier, and the upper floors give you the full Pudong skyline — the 632-metre Shanghai Tower, the Pearl tower and the SWFC bottle-opener lined up through the glass. There is a 20-metre indoor pool, a fitness centre, a spa and several restaurants. Real guests rate it around 9.5, rooms start near $140 a night, and we'd genuinely send couples, families and business travellers here.

Our #2 pick is a 5-star hotel that sits directly on Nanjing Road shopping street in central Shanghai — Sofitel Shanghai Hyland, part of the Sofitel group. Shoppers will love it, because the moment you walk out you are surrounded by stores, and it is only 50 metres from East Nanjing Road metro station. The look blends French luxury with old 1930s Shanghai, and the service is the polished kind Sofitel is known for. You can walk to the metro and to the Bund easily, and there is a restaurant, fitness centre and spa on site. Real guests rate it around 9.2, with rooms starting near $115 a night. We would send couples and dedicated shoppers here — anyone who wants a high-end base in the middle of the shopping action.

Coming in at #3 is the value pick of the list: Metropolo Jinjiang Hotel Classiq Nanjing Road, a design hotel from the Jinjiang group sitting right on the Nanjing Road shopping street in central Shanghai. It's set in a renovated 1930s building, dark grey with gold trim, with clean modern rooms and a smart compact layout. The location is the real draw: a 4-minute walk from East Nanjing Road metro and an 8-minute walk to The Bund. Real guests rate it around 9.4, with cleanliness and value standing out, and rooms start at roughly $74 a night, which is excellent for this address. We'd recommend it most for couples and design-minded travelers who want a good-looking room and a top score without paying 5-star money in the middle of town. (Note: this property replaces the article's original #3, whose Trip.com page was unreachable.)

Coming in at #4 for the best location on East Nanjing Road at a budget price — Seventh Heaven Hotel. This is an old place with real history: the building opened in 1934 as the Tung Wong Hotel in the old-Shanghai era, and the 2nd-floor lobby still has worn leather sofas and black-and-white photos of 1940s Shanghai on the walls. The single best thing here is the spot — you step out onto the East Nanjing Road pedestrian street, with the subway and The Bund both an easy walk away. Rooms are dated to match the building's age but clean and perfectly usable, and prices start at roughly $60 a night, which is a lot of central Shanghai for very little. Real guest scores sit around 8.4 to 8.6. We'd point budget-minded travelers who want to be in the middle of the main shopping street straight here.

Coming in at #5, the Jinjiang Metropolo Hotel Classic Nanjing East Road sits closer to The Bund than anything else on this list. It's a Jinjiang-group hotel at the riverside end of Nanjing East Road, Shanghai's main shopping street, so it's only a few minutes on foot to The Bund for the Pudong skyline and the Huangpu River. The building opened in 1929 as the Central Hotel and was renovated in 2018 under the Metropolo Classic brand, which is where the old-Shanghai Art Deco character comes from. Rooms are clean, the metro is an easy walk, and real guests rate it around 9.3. Doubles start near $69 a night. We'd send couples and travelers here who want a Bund-adjacent base without the 5-star price tag.

Coming in at #6, the Campanile Shanghai Bund Hotel is the pick for travelers who want a recognised European brand in The Bund without the 5-star price tag. It's a 4-star hotel run by France's Campanile chain, set on Renmin Road just 700 metres — about a 9-minute walk — from the southern end of The Bund, so the Huangpu River promenade and the Pudong skyline are easy to reach on foot. The interiors are tidy and contemporary, the rooms are clean, and there's an on-site restaurant plus the amenities you'd expect at this level. Real guests rate it around 9.2, with value scoring especially well, and rooms start near $61 a night. We'd send couples and travelers here who want a Bund-area base that doesn't blow the budget.

Number 7 is the design pick that scores remarkably high for how close it sits to The Bund: Atour Hotel Nanjing East Road on the Bund. It belongs to Atour, a fast-rising Chinese lifestyle chain that opened its first hotel in Beijing in 2013 and now runs 1,500 branches across the country. This 18-storey tower on Nanjing East Road opened in 2020, with a glass facade framed in black steel. Rooms lean clean and contemporary — light tones, good lighting, comfort over flash — and the ground-floor lobby has a Lavazza café plus a reading nook of 200-plus books free to browse. Real-guest ratings land near 9.4, with cleanliness and design scoring the strongest, and rooms start around $74 a night. We'd send couples and design-minded solo travelers here for a modern stay steps from The Bund. (Note: this hotel replaces the article's original number 7, whose Trip.com page was unreachable.)

Coming in at #8 is the luxury pick for a wide city view from a tower in the dead centre of town — the Radisson Blu Hotel Shanghai New World. It's a 5-star Radisson set in a 47-floor building shaped like a golden key, rising straight out of the New World City Mall on the west side of People's Square. The location is hard to beat: it sits right by the People's Square metro and you can walk to the Nanjing Road shopping street. Higher floors look out over a sweeping Shanghai cityscape, and the headline feature is the revolving sky bar that frames the skyline. There's an indoor pool, a gym, a spa and several restaurants, real-guest ratings run as high as 9.5, and rooms start around $119 a night. We'd point couples, families and business travellers here for a central, view-first luxury stay. (Note: this property replaces the article's original #8, whose Trip.com page was unreachable.)

Coming in at #9 is the pick that lands squarely between quality, location and price — Majesty Plaza Shanghai. It's a 4-star on the south edge of People's Square, a 25-storey tower on Yan'an East Road that first opened in 1995 and was last renovated in 2020. The location is the headline: the People's Square Metro (Lines 1, 2 and 8) sits a short walk away, and the Nanjing Road East shopping street is an easy stroll. Rooms are big, clean and tidily kept, and the hotel runs a heated indoor pool, a gym and a restaurant with solid, standard service. Real guests rate it around 9.4, with location and value scoring best. Doubles start near $80 a night, which is why we'd send couples and families here who want a dead-central base without paying central-city prices.

We close the list with a design hotel that gets both the look and the location right — Treasury Hotel Shanghai Nanjing East Road. It opened in 2021 inside a former Bank of China branch, a 12-story 1930s office building on Henan Middle Road, which is where the Treasury name comes from. The Bund sits just 350 metres away, a 5-minute walk to the Huangpu waterfront, so you can stroll the riverfront promenade and take in the Pudong skyline on foot. Rooms lean modern with a heritage edge, kept very clean, and the pedestrian shopping stretch of East Nanjing Road starts right outside. Real guests rate it highly — around 9.3 — with cleanliness and design scoring strongest. A Deluxe King starts near $74 a night. We'd point couples and design-minded travelers here for a current, well-placed stay that still feels like good value.