Dorsett Shanghai @ Century Park — Bring the Dog to Shanghai, Pet Suite on the Metro Line

Picture stepping out of the lobby with your dog and finding the metro entrance sixty metres to your right. That is the practical reality at Dorsett Shanghai @ Century Park, and guests writing on Trip.com come back to it repeatedly. Century Park station (Line 2) is not a five-minute walk — it is genuinely around the corner, Exit 4. From there, Line 2 runs west to People's Square in roughly twenty minutes, continues to Nanjing Road East and connects at various interchanges with most of the city's major lines. For travellers who fly into Pudong Airport, the same Line 2 runs the full distance without a transfer.

The hotel's most notable feature for pet owners is the Pet Friendly Suite — a duplex-layout room designed to accommodate dogs weighing up to approximately 15 kg, with a pet welcome kit prepared on arrival. It is worth stating the requirements plainly: the hotel requires guests to present a valid dog licence and a current, in-date rabies vaccination certificate before check-in is completed. This is an enforced policy, not a formality. Anyone planning to travel with a dog should prepare both documents before leaving home — arriving at the front desk without them will create a problem.

Immediately adjacent to the hotel is Century Park itself — Pudong's largest public green space, with a lake, open meadows, a children's play area and wide walking paths. For guests with dogs, this is a meaningful amenity: morning and evening walks without needing to hail a car, in a park large enough to let a dog run properly. Families with young children find the same park useful for the same reasons. The combination of park access and metro access from the same front door is, as multiple reviewers note, the real case for choosing this location over a central Puxi address.

Pricing for standard Deluxe rooms runs from approximately ¥520 (฿2,600) on regular weeknights. Shanghai's spring high season (March–May) and autumn (September–November), plus Golden Week in October, typically push rates toward ¥700–900 and above. The Pet Friendly Suite, being a duplex and a limited-supply room type, sits higher — in the ¥900–1,300 range depending on the period. Given that pet-friendly rooms are not always available as last-minute bookings, the practical advice from experienced guests is to book the specific room type well in advance and confirm directly with the hotel a few days before arrival.

The Dorsett brand operates across Hong Kong, London, Malaysia and mainland China, and the consistency in room quality and service standards is part of what the score reflects. Guest reviews on both Trip.com and Agoda repeatedly cite room cleanliness and staff attentiveness as the two strongest points — mentions that appear across different room types and travel groups, not just pet-suite guests. For a mid-range four-star property, these are the details that tip a stay from adequate to genuinely positive.

The location is Pudong East — which is a different experience from Puxi. This part of the district is quieter, greener and less commercially dense. There is no Huaihai Road shopping strip within walking distance, no cluster of restaurants and bars on the doorstep. For guests who want that kind of city-centre energy at the front door, Puxi is the right choice. But for those who want a reliable base, a proper park, clean rooms, good service and a direct metro line that reaches the whole city without a transfer, this neighbourhood offers something the central hotel clusters do not.

To be straight about what Dorsett Shanghai @ Century Park is and is not: it is not competing with the five-star Lujiazui riverside towers or the historic art-deco grandeur of the Bund. It is a well-run four-star hotel with a specific and genuine advantage for a specific type of traveller — one who comes to Shanghai with a dog, wants to stay connected to the city without a car, and does not want to pay five-star rates to do it. For that profile, it is the clearest first choice in the city.