Nanjing Hotels With an Outdoor Pool
An outdoor pool is the rarer choice in Nanjing, where humid summers and cold winters push most hotel developers toward an indoor tank instead, which is why this list centres on a single standout: the InterContinental Nanjing. Unlike the indoor-only towers nearby, it runs both an indoor and an outdoor pool in the same modern high-rise, giving guests a warm-weather deck option for the handful of months, roughly May through September, when sitting outside by water in Nanjing actually makes sense. The hotel sits a short taxi ride from Jiming Temple, making it a workable base for pairing old-town sightseeing with genuine outdoor pool time.
Nanjing's modern skyline, concentrated around Xinjiekou and the newer towers nearby, is where a hotel with the scale to build both an indoor and an outdoor pool tends to sit, four upscale restaurants in the InterContinental's case included in the same tower as both pools. It is a different Nanjing from the canal-side old town near the Confucius Temple, more about business-district convenience and modern amenities than historic atmosphere or narrow lanes.
Outdoor pool · Nanjing in numbers
Where to stay
Nanjing's Rare Warm-Weather Deck
Nanjing's climate is the reason outdoor pools stay scarce here rather than any lack of hotel investment: a short, workable window from late spring to early autumn is bracketed by a sticky, oppressive summer peak and a cold, damp winter, leaving only a few comfortable months for open-air swimming. The InterContinental Nanjing gets around this by running an outdoor pool alongside an indoor one rather than instead of it, so the property still offers water access even when the outdoor deck is not the practical choice for guests that week.
The InterContinental Nanjing is effectively the only outdoor-pool option covered here, and it earns that spot by running the pool as one half of a pair rather than a lone seasonal feature: an indoor pool covers the cold months and the outdoor deck opens for the warmer stretch of the year. That structure matters in a city where a standalone outdoor pool would sit closed and unused for close to half the calendar, an investment few hotels in Nanjing are willing to make on its own without an indoor backup to justify the extra maintenance cost involved.
Guests booking this hotel for the outdoor pool should plan around Nanjing's weather calendar rather than assume year-round access: late spring through early autumn is the realistic window, since the deck is not heated for winter use and the peak of summer can be uncomfortably humid even outside in the shade. May, June, September and early October tend to offer the most comfortable outdoor swimming conditions of the whole year, with July and August better suited to the indoor pool one floor down instead of the open-air deck outside, according to most returning guests.
Location adds to the case for this hotel specifically, with Jiming Temple reachable in roughly seven minutes by taxi, letting a stay combine a morning at one of Nanjing's more atmospheric Buddhist temples with an afternoon outdoors by the pool. That is a rare combination in a city where most upmarket hotels concentrate purely on business-district convenience rather than pairing amenities with a genuine cultural site within easy reach of the property itself, let alone one worth the short taxi ride each way from a downtown tower rather than a longer detour across the city.
The honest trade-off is that outdoor pool choice in Nanjing essentially starts and ends with this one property, so travelers set on an open-air swim with no other criteria will not find much competition or variety here. Anyone open to an indoor pool instead will have a far wider range of towers to choose from across Xinjiekou and Nanjing South, at a broader spread of prices and star ratings, though none of those alternatives offer genuine open-air water at any point in the year, whatever the season happens to be.
A traveler's takeI stayed at the InterContinental Nanjing over a warm week in late September and used the outdoor pool most afternoons after visiting Jiming Temple, a short taxi ride away from the hotel. By early October the water had cooled enough that most other guests had already switched to the indoor pool one floor down instead, and I followed them there for my last two evenings.
Local tips
- 1Visit in May, June, September or early October if the outdoor pool is the main draw, Nanjing's midsummer humidity makes the deck less comfortable than it sounds on paper.
- 2Check the outdoor pool's seasonal opening dates before booking in winter, it is very likely closed and you will be limited to the indoor option instead for your whole stay.
- 3Combine a morning at Jiming Temple with an outdoor pool afternoon, the roughly seven-minute taxi ride makes this an easy pairing to build a full day around from this hotel.
- 4Bring sun protection even on a mild day, Nanjing's outdoor pool deck gets direct exposure with little shade around the loungers compared to some resort-style setups elsewhere.
- 5Ask at check-in which pool, indoor or outdoor, has shorter hours that particular day, the two do not always run on identical schedules throughout the week.
- 6Book a room on a lower floor near the pool level if quick outdoor access matters more to you than a high-floor city view over Xinjiekou.