The best hotels in Hong Kong
A dynamic landscape, top-notch dining, world-beating efficiency and an indefatigable nature are just a few of the factors that have kept Hong Kong at the top of visitors lists for decades. These qualities are apparent in the city's hotels too, which have seized the three-year border closure as an opportunity to spruce up the goods, revamping rooms and adding hot new bars and restaurants. In Hong Kong, it tends to be the big international brands that straddle Victoria Harbour, offering luxurious facilities, super sleek service and views that will make you want to sleep with the curtains open. But that doesn't mean you can't find exceptional places to lay your head in other parts of town. While small independent hotels are hard to find, hip crash pads, lifestyle hotels and design-led digs are scattered across the city.
What is the best part of Hong Kong to stay in?
Hong Kong's most popular hotel districts are Central, on Hong Kong Island, and Tsim Sha Tsui, on Kowloon side, with the best hotels offering showstopping views of the Star Ferry zig-zagging across the harbour and the nightly Symphony of Lights show – but expect to pay a hefty premium for the privilege. Alternatively, you could venture a few stops along the MTR subway system, east or west, on either side of the harbour, for smart waterfront hotels with alternative, equally sparkly panoramas at much more reasonable prices. Not that a city view hotel will feel like second best: the neon-tinted metropolis has heaps of neighbourhoods with their own distinct identities, each with an exceptional range of places to eat guaranteed to be on the doorstep.
Hasselblad X1DThe St. Regis
For lo-fi luxury
Don't be fooled by the St. Regis' businesslike location adjacent to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre; this is no corporate cookie-cutter hotel. Behind the silvery facade is another Hong Kong hotel that has been meticulously designed and styled by André Fu. The slender double-height lobby feels grand yet intimate and leads to a zen outdoor terrace and the confidential-feeling St. Regis Bar. Michelin-star chefs oversee both restaurants: L'envol, which serves clever contemporary French cuisine, and Rún, where you'll find beautifully presented Cantonese classics. Elsewhere, there's an outdoor swimming pool (heated in winter) and a tranquil little spa that will transport you a world away from the Hong Kong hustle. Only a few of the spacious rooms and suites have harbour views, but the décor will want to make you want to run your hands over everything, from the winged leather headboards to the soft mauve throws to the creamy-white panelling that recalls Hong Kong's old shopfront shutters.
Read our full review of The St. Regis.
The Ritz-Carlton
For high style
In the city credited with having more high-rises than any other (a staggering 9,000 compared to Chicago's measly 1,397), what could be more fitting than sleeping, swimming, spa-ing and eating at nearly 500-metres above sea level? Far from a marketing ruse, the Ritz Carlton Hong Kong is one of the sexiest, most sophisticated hotels in town. Sumptuous rooms, set between floors 104 and 116, have window seats where you can peer down on Victoria Harbour, the old Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter and the new West Kowloon Cultural District. From this height, the new development looks like a miniature village but houses the mammoth M+ Museum, the Hong Kong Palace Museum, the Xiqu Centre Cantonese opera, art parks, gardens and a new waterfront promenade. Add club lounge access to your room if you can (it's extremely generous and superb quality). Alternatively, there's an Italian restaurant and a Cantonese restaurant on the 102nd floor (both with Michelin stars) and Ozone Bar on 118.
Address: The Ritz-Carlton, 1号, International Commerce Centre (ICC), 1 Austin Rd W, Kowloon, Hong Kong
The Peninsula
For some old-world magic
Part of the Kowloon waterfront for nearly a century – an eternity by Hong Kong building standards – The Peninsula embodies the city's cosmopolitan history like no other. Stone Fu Dogs guard the front doors alongside bellboys (and girls) in white pillbox hats. In the lobby, there are string quartets and afternoon teas. On the mezzanine, silver-tipped chopsticks and baskets of dim sum. The original wing has a music room, with an archive displaying hand-written BOA Clipper tickets, hand-made silk menus and 1997 Handover memorabilia. While upstairs, the seamlessly cinched-together tower houses a harbour-view swimming pool, a world-beating spa and the Philippe Starke-designed Felix Bar, which still feels futuristic 30 years after its inception. Rooms are dressed in creams, dark veneer wood with gold trim, NASA-worthy tech and 'butler boxes', which allow for items to be picked up and delivered with the utmost discretion – all part of The Peninsula's legendary service.
Address: The Peninsula, Salisbury Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
EAST
For an alternative harbour view
The clue is in the name: East is located seven MTR stops from Central – or a meander on the tram – on the eastern end of Hong Kong Island. Guests here tend to be business types but the hotel (a sibling of the Upper House) has plenty to offer holidaymakers too, including an outdoor swimming pool, a tip-top restaurant, a louche rooftop bar and whip-smart rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows which look out across Victoria Harbour towards the old Kai Tak Airport runway. The surrounding neighbourhoods, too, are ripe for exploration, from photographing the colourful 1960s 'Yik Cheong Monster Building' housing estate to hiking up Mount Parker for dizzying views of the city, to working your way along Electric Road chowing down on some of the best street food in the city.
DIGITALAPINThe Hari
For local vibes
This slimline hotel in Wan Chai has a pleasingly relaxed aura that you sense the moment you step inside off Lockhart Road – a busy thoroughfare that runs from Admiralty to Causeway Bay. London-based interior designer Tara Bernerd is behind the suave aesthetic: opal blues, golden browns and tactile velvets in the intimate lobby lounge; green tadelakt plaster walls and burnt orange banquettes in Italian restaurant Lucciola; rose pinks, burgundies and an origami ceiling in Japanese restaurant Zoku, which also has a large leafy outdoor terrace perfect for cool drinks on a balmy night. The Hari's contemporary art collection, curated by London's Pontone Gallery, is genuinely interesting featuring graphic paintings, digital pieces, three-dimensional images and works by young Hong Kong artists.
Address: The Hari, 330 Lockhart Rd, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Fullerton Ocean Park
For fun beside the seaside
The views of Aberdeen Harbour, Ap Lei Pi Island and the mossy-green South China Sea are wonderful. Located next door to Ocean Park theme park and Water World water park, the Fullerton Ocean Park is the first luxury hotel on Hong Kong Island's green and gorgeous south side. Also nearby are hiking trails, beaches and barbecue pits but you're still only 15 minutes in a taxi from the city centre, making this a great option for families. There's a huge swimming pool, a gorgeous Bamford spa with hydrotherapy pools overlooking the ocean and an array of room categories, from seaview bedrooms to penthouse suites with sun decks and private pools, all decorated in calming cream and pistachio. Restaurants cover Cantonese, Singaporean, Italian and international cuisines and everyone of them is excellent.
Address: Fullerton Ocean Park, 3 Ocean Dr, Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Eaton
For street cred
This four-star hotel with rooms for less than £100 a night is far cooler than any of Hong Kong's snobbish private members clubs. The sister hotel to The Eaton in Washington D.C. – a self-proclaimed anti-Trump hotel – is located around the corner from Temple Street Night Market in Yau Ma Tei (on Kowloon side), an old-school neighbourhood that still looks like the backdrop to an old Hong Kong action flick. Rooms are squeeze-y, ranging from 17-square metres to 56-square metres, but they've been smartly kitted out with 1970s-inspired cork walls, orange flip clocks and pummelling showers. There's an extremely good Cantonese restaurant, Yat Tung Heen, a fantastic Hong Kong-style food court, and a terrace bar, Terrible Baby, which serves sustainably made cocktails to unpretentious locals who wash up with their doggies in tow. But the real heart of the hotel is Eaton Workshop, a mazes of multi-media co-working rooms which also showcases art exhibitions, film screenings and live performances. Valuable office space is also donated to local NGOs.
Address: Eaton, 380 Nathan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Hotel Icon
For pocket-friendly luxury
Asia's largest indoor vertical garden greets guests at this cool but unpretentious hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, which also acts as a training school for hospitality students at the adjacent Hong Kong Polytechnic (although the staff are all so good at their jobs that you'd never know unless we told you). The Chinese restaurant – Above and Beyond – was designed by the late Sir Terence Conran and is as popular with locals as it is with guests, serving exquisite dim sum by day and more intricate Cantonese dishes by night (try the honey-glazed barbecue pork and the wok-fried lobster with egg white and black truffle). Modern, spacious rooms in smokey hues are packed with clever little extras, such as complimentary mini-bars, illustrated neighbourhood guides, power banks you can borrow for the duration of your stay and teeth whitening kits. A hotel that will make you smile.
Address: Hotel Icon, 17 Science Museum Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
Mandarin Oriental
To be in the social thick of it
Celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2023, few hotels have a history that is as zeitgeist-y as Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong's – this is where David Bowie met up with John Lennon for the last time, where Christian Dior debuted his Boutique Collection in Asia, where Muhammad Ali stopped en route to Beijing at the request of then Chairman Deng Xiaoping, where Margaret Thatcher mulled over the terms of the now-defunct Sino-British Joint Declaration. It's not just the MO's storied past that draws guests back time and time again; there's a brilliant spa set over three levels and 10 bars and restaurants, including Man Wah (freshly redecorated with China-blue panelling, red lanterns and gold birdcage lamps) and new addition The Aubrey, a Japanese Izakaya with maximalist interiors and a busy bar. A renovation across this year will bring new look rooms and restaurants. We can hardly wait for the big reveal.
Address: Mandarin Oriental, 5 Connaught Road, Central, Hong Kong
The Murray
For the rooftop bar
When The Murray Building was built in 1969 it won multiple awards for its forward-thinking energy-saving design. Its bones were so strong that fifty years later it was ably remodelled into a five-star hotel by Foster + Partners, whose other masterworks – skeletal Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Building – happen to dominate The Murray's view. The 336 rooms are some of the largest in the city bedecked in steely greys, blues, and blacks, with generous marble bathrooms featuring Japanese electronic toilets and glass panels that mist at the touch of a button. The food and drink are good (if not exceptional) – try to catch afternoon tea on the terrace and happy hour at the lobby bar – but the main event is the rooftop bar, Popinjays, which has dizzying views of the HSBC bank and I.M. Pei's jagged Bank of China, as well as eyefuls of Hong Kong Harbour, Hong Kong Park, the Botanic Gardens and Victoria Peak.
Rosewood
For a pampering break
The Rosewood Hong Kong opened in 2019 but already feels like it's been a part of the city's scene forever. Cutting a fine figure on the new Kowloon-side Victoria Dockside promenade, over 80 per cent of the rooms in the 65-storey building come with showstopping views of Hong Kong's glittering harbour. The rooms and suites – 413 in total – have been designed by Tony Chi and reflect the city's cosmopolitan past, artfully blending weighty jade-green lacquer doors with pale Scottish plaid and smart local artworks. Gastronomes will worship the divine Indian cuisine at Chaat and the meticulously-made Cantonese dishes at The Legacy House. Goody-two-shoes can self-improve at Asaya, an urban spa with the kind of holistic treatments – expressive art therapy, hypnosis, nutrition plans, Dr Barbara Strum's LED light facials – that are more likely to be found at retreats in Thailand and Bali.
Read our full review of the Rosewood.
Address: Rosewood Hong Kong, No18, Salisbury Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
The Upper House
For the vibrant scene
Set in Admiralty (a slightly calmer slice of prize real estate wedged between Wan Chai and Central), The Upper House was the first hotel in Swire's swish House Collective and the property that made the name of Hong Kong interiors hotshot André Fu. From the discreet entrance to the vertiginous sky bridge which straddles a 48-storey atrium, everything feels expensive. The rooms are some of the largest in Hong Kong, all done up in smooth ivory, bronze and cognac tones with suave touchy-feely furnishings, precisely positioned art pieces and views of the harbour or Victoria Peak. In 2021, the hotel's only restaurant Cafe Grey Deluxe made way for a new modern Mediterranean restaurant Salisterra – also designed by Fu – helmed by 25-year-old chef and ex-Gordon Ramsey protege Cary Docherty, whose presence has made it harder than ever to bag a table. Unusually, there's no swimming pool or spa but Bamford treatments can be arranged in your room and the Upper House's real appeal is its spoiling exclusivity.
Read our full review of The Upper House.
Address: The Upper House, 88 Queensway, Admiralty, Hong Kong
Four Seasons
Harbourfront luxury
Linked to the upmarket IFC (International Finance Centre) building and shopping mall, the striking glass front of this luxury hotel stands proud against the bottle green of Victoria Harbour. The lobby was made for gawping, with its triple height window framing the Central Star Ferry pier outside and the ebb and flow of bankers, tycoons, tai pans and tai tais inside. All of the rooms were redone during the pandemic in appropriately luxurious (if a little predictable) golds and dark woods, with big marble bathrooms, smart TVs, Bose speakers and sleep menus that feature bedtime foot massages and Tibetan singing bowl rituals. A more exciting new addition is Argo, a mirrored birdcage of a cocktail bar filled with beautiful people in their best plumage. Three restaurant – Caprice, Lung Kin Heen, Sushi Saito – share seven Michelin stars between them. The pool terrace lapped by the harbour and expansive holistic spa are also strong draws.
Address: Four Seasons, 8 Finance St, Central, Hong Kong
The Landmark Mandarin Oriental
For the socialising
When you ask a Hong Kong taxi driver to take you to Man Wah (the Mandarin), the first thing they'll ask you is, 'old or new?' The Landmark Mandarin Oriental is the newer of the two, the fashionable little sister located on Queen's Road, a few blocks away from the original. Hemmed in by high-rises there are no views worth mentioning. Instead, all eyes are on the Joyce Wang interiors, the Michelin star food and the fashionable clientele (the hotel was said to have been a favourite of Giorgio Armani). The 113 rooms are contemporary yet cosseting, with champagne-gold walls and dark wooden floors, angular headboards and subtle industrial touches – anodized metals, ridged surfaces, track lighting. Then there's the spa, which unfurls over two levels and includes a swimming pool, a hammam, steam rooms, saunas and a Bastien Gonzales Mani-Pedi studio. Amber is one of the few restaurants in Asia to have achieved a Green Michelin star.
Address: The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, 15 Queen's Road Central, Central, Hong Kong