2 weeks Ago By Vogue
Believe us, Hong Kong is a city with range : name another place on this planet where you can wake up, eat a Michelin-starred dim sum breakfast for less than a tenner, hike a mountain, cop a new Coach bag at the summit, and watch a rugby match all in time for a late lunch. Indeed, Hong Kong’s reputation as one of Asia’s great urban destinations is hard to argue against, as the crowds that flock to the city for its cultural dynamism, superior retail and eating scenes, and resplendent natural beauty attest. Amid all that, though, is one of the world’s most impressive hotel scenes, spanning everything from proud grande-dames to edgy, culture-led “third spaces”; staggeringly luxurious palaces in the sky to cosy boutique nooks.
What is there to do in Hong Kong? Put plainly, plenty. Whatever your criteria for a worthwhile trip, they’ll be fulfilled. If shopping’s your bag, a wander through Central’s warren of high-end malls or along Kowloon’s Canton Road will put your wallet to work – while the night markets around Temple Street in Jordan and Tai Yuen Street in Wan Chai are musts.
Keen on a beach-and-a-book moment? The SAR’s archipelago offers no end of options, from village Shek O to the secluded white sands of Long Ke Wan. And then there’s Hong Kong’s world-beating contemporary art scene. The pinnacle of the city’s cultural calendar is its annual art week – centred on Art Basel Hong Kong, the titanic art fair – in late March.
Venture beyond the Exhibition Centre, though, and you’ll discover a scene to rival London’s or New York’s. Major blue-chip galleries like Hauser & Wirth, Gagosian and David Zwirner all have outposts here, while institutions like Tai Kwun, a former prison turned cultural complex, and M+, a mega-museum billed as the city’s answer to Tate Modern, regularly stage exhibitions of global repute. A pro tip: venture further afield for the real gems.
At the eastern end of Hong Kong Island sits Para Site, one of Asia’s most revered – and longest-running – art centres, while the southern side is home to some of the city’s most visionary commercial galleries, like Blindspot, Empty Gallery and Kiang Malingue. All of them are nested on the upper floors of faceless industrial buildings, but that only adds to the sense of reward when you eventually find them. How do I get to Hong Kong? Hong Kong is a pretty easy place to reach – from the UK in particular.
Operating up to six direct connections a day from London Heathrow – and a daily direct route from Manchester – Cathay Pacific is your go-to. While it’s a seamless journey, we won’t lie – it’s a pretty long one. In the airline’s newly launched Aria Suite , though, 13 (closer to 15 on your way home!) hours will literally fly by.
It’s one of the cosiest, most private business class products in the sky, featuring a fully flat bed and a sliding door that ensures cocoon-like comfort – oh, and a 24-inch 4K screen if you’d rather binge the latest blockbusters, and leave sleep for when you land. Where should I stay in Hong Kong? Surveying Hong Kong’s breadth of accommodation options can be daunting, raising no end of questions: Island side or Kowloon side? Old-world opulence or contemporary glam? And is it really worth that much extra for a harbour view? Well, we’re here with the answers. The best hotels in Hong Kong at a glance: Below, find Vogue ’s guide to the best hotels in Hong Kong.
The Peninsula The Peninsula is to Hong Kong as Claridge’s is to London – an institution without which the city just wouldn’t be the same. For close to a century, this grande dame has loomed over the Kowloon side of the Victoria Harbour with a proud permanence. A haven of warm nostalgia, it’s one of the few places in this cyber city where the value of old-school hospitality makes itself earnestly – and compellingly – felt.
From the moment the pillbox hat-wearing porters waft you across the grand lobby’s flagged marble floors, it’s as if you’ve stepped back to a nobler time. This vintage sensibility carries over into where you’ll be bedding down. King rooms are upholstered in swathes of cream leather and champagne woven wallpaper, and trimmed with mahogany veneers, while bathrooms are fitted out in granite and travertine stone.
Red lacquer wall hangings conjure a keen sense of place, even with the blinds closed – raising them, though, reveals the money shot: a timeless vista of Victoria Harbour, with the Star Ferry bobbing across the water, backlit by a neon-flecked wall of glass and steel. While The Peninsula may be an anchor point of Hong Kong’s past, that doesn’t hamper the vital role it plays in its present. This was especially noticeable during Hong Kong Art Week, when the hotel’s yearly Art in Resonance programme was in full flow, centred on three large-scale artist commissions – including a curatorial collaboration with the V&A – installed across the hotel’s most prominent public spaces.
From Phoebe Hui’s hulking moonscape mobile hanging over the forecourt to Lin Fanglu’s stark, scarlet textile installation in the lobby, the works on show were both ambitious and genuinely impactful in their scale and conceptual scope, testifying to The Pen’s investment in Hong Kong’s buzzy art scene. Starting nightly price: £510 Amenities: Restaurants, bars, pool, café, fitness centre, spa Address: Salisbury Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong Rosewood Hong Kong As one of the newer arrivals in one of the world’s most competitive luxury hospitality scenes, opening in 2019, Rosewood Hong Kong pulls all the stops to impress; rather than be greeted by a hotel representative at Hong Kong airport’s arrivals, for example, you’re chaperoned straight off the plane. While such insistent efforts could risk coming off as overly fussy or keen to please, they’re executed with such finesse that you can’t help but be swept off your feet.
If The Peninsula is Hong Kong’s fair lady, this is the new bombshell on the block, occupying the 30-or-so upper floors of a gleaming skyscraper on Victoria Harbour’s Kowloon side. Now, the rooms. The coup de foudre hits the second you peep at the frankly absurd views that you will spend hours (and I mean hours ) gawping at – the majority of accommodations offer a falcon’s nest vantage on Hong Kong’s world-famous skyline that will make you feel like Succession ’s Logan Roy.
When you manage to peel yourself from the floor-to-ceiling windows to take in the space itself, you’ll discover a feast for any interior buff’s eyes: blue velvet sofas, plaid pouffes, leather-upholstered lamps and characterful paintings evoking local street scenes playfully collide in a vision of elevated, homely eclecticism. And then there’s the bathroom, a hall of (very flattering!) mirrors set into streaked marble, which functions as well as a very extra selfie studio as a plush powder room. Even if you convince yourself to quit your room, the hotel’s banquet of amenities make a compelling case for you to stay on-site.
The Manor Club, for starters: a stately 40th-floor enfilade that reimagines the fusty “executive lounge” as a decadently appointed hang-out spot; access comes complimentary when you book a room on the 40th floor or above. There’s also a host of hot-ticket restaurants and bars, including the Michelin-starred Legacy House – which dishes up classic Cantonese classics against a scenic dockside backdrop – and Darkside, a sultry jazz and cocktail den that’s been nominated among Asia’s best bars year-on-year. Add to that a spa and health club exclusively featuring Guerlain treatments, and an Insta-hotspot infinity pool, and you can see how and why Rosewood Hong Kong has kept tongues wagging since its opening day.
Starting nightly price: £758 Amenities: Restaurants, bars, pool, café, fitness centre, spa Address: 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong The Upper House Tell anyone familiar with Hong Kong that you’re staying at The Upper House and you’ll be met with a gasp of awe, tinged with envy – and if they’re a close enough acquaintance, probably a request to join you for a sleepover. If you were to oblige, they’d hardly be encroaching on your personal space, though. In a city infamous for its lacking space, The Upper House’s suite-only accommodations start at a palatial 68 square metres, making them the largest in town.
Perched on the highest ten floors of a skyscraper nooked between Admiralty and Wan Chai, you benefit from being right in the thick of things, while floating about it all. Indeed, it’s one of the property’s main selling points, with The Upper House taking pride in its expertly honed aura of serenity and calm – qualities that make themselves felt from the moment you step onto the silk-screen lined escalator to the lift that floats you up to your lofty suite up above. That sense of tranquility is echoed in the exquisitely understated interiors by renowned designer André Fu, with rooms outfitted in warm Japanese pine with accents and soft furnishings in cream, jade and sencha green.
In the bathroom, you’ll find a standalone tub you could do laps in – though do heed the warning about lowering the blinds at night, unless you want to give the neighbouring late night office workers an impromptu peep show. While this palace of zen may lack a spa, the 48th floor gym gives onto soul-soothing views of Hong Kong’s forested Peak, while a neighbouring serviced apartment complex houses a series of advanced physical and spiritual wellness programmes. Stone & Star offers insightful tarot and crystal healing sessions, while 10x Longevity covers everything from microneedling facials to hyperbaric oxygen chamber sessions, infrared sauna and cold plunge sessions.
Pro tip: if you’re lagging from your journey here (or perhaps just the night before), the latter will revive you like nothing else. You can see why so many wish they could make The Upper House their home. Starting nightly price: £527 Amenities: Restaurants, bars, café, fitness centre, external wellness facilities Address: 88 Queensway, Admiralty, Hong Kong The Murray If you’re the outdoors-y type, then look no further – not so much because The Murray is nestled in the midst of Hong Kong’s abundant nature (it's in fact situated on the cusp of Hong Kong’s financial district, making it a business trippers’ favourite) but more for the ease of access to it.
The hotel is perched right next to the entrance to the Peak Tram, the near-vertical funicular that lifts you high above the buildings to the top of the mountain at Hong Kong Island’s heart, where you’ll find some of the world’s most breathtaking urban running and hiking trails. Of course, a yen for the outdoors isn’t a pre-requisite to stay here. Architecture buffs will delight in the fact that this is one of Hong Kong’s Modernist landmarks – the soaring white arch-fronted former office-building was originally designed by Ron Phillips in 1969, and later reimagined as a hotel by Norman Foster’s Foster + Partners, opening its doors in its current incarnation as a hotel in 2018.
And anyone will swoon over the rooms, which are among the city’s most ample – a real selling point in a city where space is a scarce commodity! – decorated in cool hues with muted stone and timber accents, with hi-spec tech perks like Japanese washlets and self-misting glass shower screens featuring throughout. Starting nightly price: £315 Amenities: Restaurants, bars, pool, café, fitness centre, spa Address: 22 Cotton Tree Drive, Central, Hong Kong Eaton HK Located a little deeper into Kowloon than the other properties on this list, Eaton HK offers immersion into a more authentic side of Hong Kong. That’s in part because of its location on Nathan Road, close to Temple Street Night Market and the grungy backstreets immortalised in Wong Kar Wai’s ’90s neo-noirs, but it’s also because Eaton is a space that’s active in inviting the city in.
Conceptualised as a sort of “third place”, the Hong Kong outlet of Eaton Workshop – the famously “anti-Trump” hospitality company with roots in Washington DC – serves as much as a creative co-working space, cultural hub and local hangout as a hotel. Beneath its roof, you’ll find a cocktail bar-cum-performance space, a Michelin-starred Cantonese restaurant, a community radio station, and even Tomorrow Maybe, an in-house art gallery with razor-sharp exhibition and public programming. But what of the rooms, you ask? Granted, these aren’t quite the destinations-in-themselves suites we’ve seen elsewhere, with rooms falling more in line with Hong Kong’s economical sizing standards.
Still, tastefully appointed, functional and fitted out with some pretty nifty mod cons – Smart TVs, USB-C ports and even Himalayan salt lamps – they more than fit the bill if you’re looking for a comfortable place to lay your head. The real clincher, though, is the price – rooms are often available below the £100 a night mark. Given that, with everything going on in the building, you aren’t that likely to be spending too much time cooped up in your room, Eaton HK offers bang for your buck and then some.
Starting nightly price: £62 Amenities: Restaurants, bars, pool, café, fitness centre, art gallery Address: 380 Nathan Road, Jordan, Hong Kong Mondrian Hong Kong As has probably become apparent reading this, in Hong Kong, one of the key distinguishing features of any hotel has less to do with what you’ll find within its walls, and more with what’s outside its windows – ergo, a harbour-front view is a major asset, albeit one that comes at an often eyebrow-raising cost. Arriving in town just over a year ago, Mondrian’s Hong Kong outpost seems to have pulled off the near-impossible: offering sumptuously luxurious accommodation that ticks that sea view box without totally breaking the bank. Occupying a 40-storey tower in the thick of Tsim Sha Tsui, the location is second-to-none, and as concise a cross-section of old and new Hong Kong as you’ll find – within a ten-minute stroll, you’ll find everything from rickety cha chaan tengs to multistorey Chanel stores, the ol’ faithful Star Ferry to about five different Saint Laurent boutiques, as well as a number of MTR stops to take you further afield.
There’s plenty to keep you glued to the Mondrian itself, though, which is among the city’s most refreshingly vibrant in terms of decor. From mermaid mosaic frescoes in the lobby to the plush travertine and tapestry fabric finishings seen across the main dining room at Carna, the buzzed-about Tuscan steakhouse on the 40th floor, the fil rouge that draws Mondrian’s eclectic spaces together is a warm, unabashed sense of personality. That carries over into the rooms, albeit in a more muted tone, but the winning feature is – you guessed it – that postcard vista.
Starting nightly price: £168 Amenities: Restaurants, bars, fitness centre Address: 8A Hart Avenue, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong Little Tai Hang Little Tai Hang isn’t exactly off the beaten track – it’s only a 10-minute walk from Causeway Bay, one of Hong Kong’s busiest shopping areas. Still, in a city where neighbourhoods – and their vibes – shift at the crossing of an intersection, its location in the decidedly residential nook of Tai Hang immediately gives it a charmingly low-key feel that will no doubt be a plus-point for many – especially for those who’ve already visited town a few times. Comprising three standalone “houses”, accommodations range from cosy studios with bucolic garden views to two-bedroom serviced apartments that give on to the Kai Tak side of the harbour, with each appointed in tasteful, mid-century British-meets-Scandi style.
Since this is more of a boutique vibe, this isn’t the place to opt for if a lavish breakfast buffet and a comprehensive spa menu are non-negotiables. But if a chic, homely stay in a quintessentially Hong Kong neighbourhood is the box you’re looking to tick, look no further. Starting nightly price: £130 Amenities: Restaurants, bars, fitness centre Address: 98 Tung Lo Wan Road, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.
