Hong Kong Travel Guide: Best Luxury Hotels & Restaurants

2026-08-01 · By April Windsor

In: Hong Kong

Hong Kong announces itself from the air. The harbour opens beneath you, silver and wide, the skyline stacked at the water's edge. Then you land and the city takes over: trams clattering through streets where incense curls from temple doorways, glass towers catching cloud, a rooftop bar somewhere above the harbour already pouring into the golden hour.

K11 ARTUS, TSIM SHA TSUI

If The Upper House is a house in the sky, K11 ARTUS is an artist’s residence made rentable. Adrian Cheng’s K11 Group opened it in 2019 atop K11 MUSEA at Victoria Dockside, with interiors again by André Fu, who imagined its 287 residences as a contemporary artist’s home rather than a serviced apartment. The name folds art into the Latin for home.

Studios start at 510 square feet and climb to penthouses past 3,700, most with a ribbon of private balcony, the best of them wrapping over the harbour. Downstairs, a double-height library stands in for a lobby, a 25-metre infinity pool faces the water, and the art on the walls is museum-grade. It is the rare long-stay address you would choose for a weekend. artus.com.hk

KIMPTON TSIM SHA TSUI

The newest arrival on this list, and the biggest statement. Kimpton chose Hong Kong for its city debut in September 2025 and did not do it quietly: 495 rooms and suites on Middle Road, the largest hotel in the brand’s global portfolio, every one framing Victoria Harbour through floor-to-ceiling glass. The design nods to the site’s maritime past, the old Mariner’s Club and the 1907 Signal Hill Tower next door, in rattan and warm wood. The fiftieth floor holds a heated twenty-metre infinity pool looking straight down the harbour, the gym is the only hotel gym in the city equipped for HYROX training, and the Kimpton-exclusive Angsana Spa keeps five treatment rooms for afterwards.

Five places to eat and drink run from Birdsong’s crepes in the lobby to High Dive, an eight-seat speakeasy on the fiftieth floor, and JIJA, where Vicky Lau cooks Yunnan and Guizhou. Kimpton being Kimpton, there is a nightly wine hour and a genuinely no-limits welcome for dogs. Children do just as well: the Family Harbour Suite pitches a small tent bed in the corner of sixty-eight square metres of harbour view, a drawing board beside it, and the package trades the parents an hour at the spa. kimptonhongkong.com

LANSON PLACE, CAUSEWAY BAY

Causeway Bay moves fast. Neon stacks above the pavements, the MTR hums underfoot, and the noise does not let up. Which is why Lanson Place matters: step inside and the city drops away.

Pierre-Yves Rochon’s interiors are warm, layered, quietly French. Soft linens, reading lamps, marble bathrooms where you lose track of the hour. The suites have the proportions and the calm of a well-kept apartment; you brew tea in the afternoon light and watch the city move below. In a neighbourhood this loud, stillness is the luxury. Salon Lanson downstairs runs from a semi-buffet breakfast through to dinner, the fitness room fills with natural daylight, and the larger residences keep a fully stocked kitchenette for stays that stretch. Victoria Park is a five minute walk, which in Causeway Bay counts as a garden of your own. lansonplace.com

ISLAND SHANGRI-LA, ADMIRALTY

The grand dame of Admiralty, rising fifty-six floors above Pacific Place since 1991, and still the most unapologetically opulent address on this side of the harbour. The atrium holds The Great Motherland of China, a sixteen-storey silk mural in 250 panels, best taken in slowly from the glass lifts. There are 771 chandeliers in the building, one in every room. The kitchens hold two Michelin stars, Summer Palace for Cantonese and Petrus up on the 56th floor for French, and the new Yun Wellness floor ends at a 28.5 metre outdoor pool facing Hong Kong Park, striped parasols and rattan below the towers.

Yun runs ten treatment rooms, brought Swiss medi-spa Dr. Burgener to Asia for the first time, and keeps the only far-infrared sauna in a Hong Kong hotel. Ming Pavilion on Level 8 makes a serious case for Hokkien cooking, Chef Lam Yeung’s tea-smoked crispy chicken and Xiamen-style popiah served among carved wood and floral wallpaper. Families are looked after properly here too: a dedicated Family Floor of themed children’s rooms, safari to treetop to enchanted castle, which buys parents a slow hour at the pool. Old school in the best possible way. shangri-la.com

THE PENINSULA, KOWLOON

There are hotels that belong to a city, and then there is The Peninsula, at the tip of Kowloon since 1928. The lobby still carries the hush of a place that has watched everything change without once rearranging the furniture.

The marble gleams as it always has, the fleet of Rolls-Royces waits at the entrance, afternoon tea arrives on tiered porcelain while the string quartet plays. Upstairs the suites are generous and unhurried, the harbour framed wall to wall. The Peninsula does not chase the new; permanence is the offer, and it keeps it. peninsula.com

THE UPPER HOUSE, ADMIRALTY

Designed by André Fu, The Upper House opened in 2009 above Pacific Place and still sets the standard the rest of the city is measured against. It reads less like a hotel than a private house in the sky: 117 rooms across the tower’s upper floors, no reception desk at all, you settle the paperwork on an iPad in your room, and studios that begin around 730 square feet, among the largest in a city that counts every one.

It belongs to Swire’s House Collective, and in 2025 it ranked among the world’s ten best hotels at The World’s 50 Best Hotels. Salisterra, Fu’s Mediterranean dining room on level 49, is where we send you to eat; the Sky Lounge beside it, four-metre ceilings and one great fireplace, is where the evening should end. upperhouse.com

TABLES & MEMBER CLUBS

PERIDOT BAR

The Henderson is a rippling glass tower by Zaha Hadid Architects, and Peridot occupies its 38th floor. The bar glows green and gold, the cocktails are sculptural, and from this height Central turns into a grid of light. It opened quietly and was immediately full; the crowd is young, moneyed, design-literate. Take the seat by the window. peridothk.com

CARBONE, CENTRAL

Carbone arrives in Hong Kong with the full theatrical confidence of its New York original. Red leather banquettes, tuxedoed waiters, Caesar salads tossed tableside. The spicy rigatoni alla vodka has its own following. The room runs loud and warm and the evening goes longer than planned, usually on account of the Barolo. Italian-American dining at its most generous. carbone.com.hk

SALISTERRA, THE UPPER HOUSE

Forty-nine floors above Pacific Place, Salisterra floats. Mediterranean flavours land clean and bright, the wine list leans coastal, and the glass runs floor to ceiling with Victoria Harbour below in blue and silver. Book lunch on a clear day. upperhouse.com

CIPRIANI MEMBERS CLUB

You know a Cipriani when you walk into one. White tablecloths, carpaccio with its perfect slick of oil, Bellinis that taste the same in Venice as they do in New York as they do here, on the twelfth floor of the old Bank of China Building. There is comfort in that consistency. The Hong Kong outpost keeps the tradition intact, Central’s rooftops in the windows and a members-only hush over the room. The pasta is handmade, the lighting forgiving, and time moves at an Italian pace. cipriani.com

CHINA CLUB

On the top three floors of the old Bank of China Building, the China Club is still David Tang’s 1991 vision: Chinese antiques beside contemporary art, silk lampshades throwing amber light across dark wood, rooms that manage to feel traditional and alive at once. The Cantonese kitchen is exceptional, the long bar keeps its regulars, and the private dining rooms upstairs have seen their share of history. laisundining.com

AP HOUSE, K11 MUSEA

Audemars Piguet built AP House inside K11 Musea, and it feels less like a watch boutique than a private museum you happen to have a key to. Display cases hold timepieces like small sculpture; the materials run to stone, bronze and oak. The lounge upstairs serves coffee to collectors and the curious alike. You do not need to buy a watch; looking is allowed. audemarspiguet.com

ART BASEL HONG KONG

Each spring the city transforms. Galleries from more than forty countries converge on the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and for one week Hong Kong talks about little else. Collectors fly in from Tokyo, London, São Paulo. Hotel lobbies fill with catalogue bags, satellite shows open in Kowloon warehouses and Central galleries, and the week runs later than you plan. artbasel.com

Hong Kong repays every visit. The light changes, the harbour shifts, a new rooftop opens. Keep an evening free and let the city fill it.

The Details Hong Kong Stay: K11 ARTUS, Tsim Sha Tsui. Kimpton Tsim Sha Tsui. Lanson Place, Causeway Bay. Island Shangri-La, Admiralty. The Peninsula, Kowloon. The Upper House, Admiralty Dine: Peridot Bar at The Henderson, Carbone (Central), Salisterra at The Upper House, Cipriani Members Club Experience: China Club, AP House at K11 Musea, Art Basel Hong Kong, Victoria Harbour Good to know: Spring for Art Basel, autumn for clear harbour light. The Star Ferry remains the most beautiful commute in Asia.

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Photography All photography by Splendid Magazine, captured on the Leica M Series and Apple iPhone 17 Pro .