17 hours in Beijing airport! Need advice...
 

1) Can we leave the airport? If so, can we take a city tour from the airport?

2) Do you have any information about the airport hotels?

3) Other recommenadtions???

I am sure you cannot leave the airport. Try your own airline and a couple of others to see if you can buy a business class lounge pass for the day. I had an 8 hour layover in BKK a week ago and luckily I had a business class ticket, so I spent the time in Thai's beautiful bz lounge trying to eat $800 worth of food and juice:) They had sleeping cabins there too which I did not look at. There is high speed internet and lots of papers & free booze (didn't use that) which makes the day go faster.

Yes, you are beyond customs and immigration control, with a stamp on your entry documents rather than in your passport, and there are many accounts of people going into town regardless of what any regulations may or may not say. The maximum permitted time is 24 hours.

There are rooms rentable by the hour or longer in all three terminals, and left luggage counters in all three, too. There is a new Ibis hotel very close to the airport, a Hilton about to open nearby, and a Crowne Plaza a 20-minute shuttle bus drive away. There are others, too.

Well a week ago I did change planes in Shanghi and was given a stamp in my passport that allowed me to stay one day because my name was on an airline's outgoing manifest. Maybe you could leave the terminal on that and nobody would know.

Regulations in Shanghai specifically permit stays of up to 48 hours, and permit leaving the airport, not least because transiting through Shanghai may involve changing airport.

There's a whiff of spam about the sudden rush of recommendations for the most appalling Chinese tour company and other websites, but it should be noted in passing that the Capital Airport Hotel is a dump that should be amongst the last places you'd consider staying, that you can get from the airport to the Forbidden City by taxi in 40 mins in the middle of the night but rarely anything like so quickly during the day, and the prices quoted on the website for one-day tours are a rip-off, as well as containing the most bizarre combinations of sights obviously assuming you've done central Beijing on your own, as indeed you should.

Peter N-H

The post above refers to another originally immediately above it, which has now been deleted.

Thanks Peter. You have been very helpful.