Boutique Hong Kong: 5 slow days, two very good rooms
This is the version of Hong Kong for people who care about where they sleep, what is on the walls and how long lunch takes. It has three fixed things in it and everything else is a suggestion.
- Duration
- 5 days
- Pace
- Slow
- Hotel changes
- 1
- Best months
- Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb
- From
- $2,250 per person
It is also the version where we are most direct about value. Hong Kong at this tier buys you an outstanding hotel with a small room and an exceptional location. It does not buy you space. If square metres are what you want from a boutique trip, the honest answer is that your money goes further in Bangkok or Taipei, and we would rather say that now than have you discover it at check-in.
What Hong Kong does give you at this level is a city where the design, art and drinking scene is genuinely good, where a fifteen minute walk from a beautiful hotel reaches a nine-seat counter and a hundred-year-old temple, and where the harbour from a private boat is worth every part of the fuss.
Who it suits: returning visitors, design-minded travellers, and anyone who has decided a short trip should be a good one.
Your specialist: Asaf Zamshtein, who runs our China desk, with our Hong Kong partner team on the ground.
A note on who is on the ground. Our own offices are in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines. Hong Kong is not one of them. We run this route through a Hong Kong partner team we have worked with for years, and we would rather name them than imply an office we do not have.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive, Sheung Wan. Private car from the airport. Two nights in a small design hotel on the western end of the island, which is where the galleries, the coffee, the antique dealers and the good bars are, and where the city still has street level rather than podium level.
Nothing scheduled. Dinner within walking distance.
Day 2: Art, and the light. A late start. Late morning at Tai Kwun, the restored former central police station and prison, now the best cultural complex in the city and free to enter. Lunch in one of its courtyards.
Afternoon on Hollywood Road and the Poho streets: contemporary galleries, ceramics, the antique dealers who have been there since long before the area was fashionable, and PMQ, a former police married quarters block now full of independent design studios.
Late afternoon to the Peak, timed for the last hour of daylight. Lugard Road on foot, then a table for the switch-on. If the hill is in cloud, we move it and tell you in the morning.
Day 3: A private junk. Four hours on the water in the afternoon, on a traditional junk with red sails or a motor yacht, out through the eastern harbour and around the islands, with a swimming stop from May to October and drinks in the harbour at sunset. This is the fixed point of the trip and everything else moves around it.
Evening: one restaurant worth planning around, chosen with you rather than for you. Hong Kong at this level has Cantonese rooms with three generations of technique behind them, tasting menus with a harbour window, and counters that seat nine. Tell us which and we book it two to three weeks out.
Day 4: Move to Kowloon, and the west. Late morning transfer across the harbour. Two nights in a harbour-facing room on the Kowloon side, because the view of the island is the one worth having and it belongs to this shore.
Afternoon at the West Kowloon Cultural District: M+, which is the largest museum of contemporary visual culture in Asia and is genuinely worth two hours, and the Palace Museum next door if Chinese antiquities interest you. The waterfront lawn in front of them is the best free view in Hong Kong.
Evening free. The hotel bars on this side look at the island, which is the right way round.
Day 5: An island lunch, then departure. Depending on your flight: the ferry to Lamma, a ninety minute walk across the island and a long seafood lunch at the harbour, or a slow morning and a spa. Both are correct.
Private transfer to the airport, about 45 minutes.
What is included
Five nights in two properties, in the room category we would actually book rather than the entry level, breakfast throughout, private car and driver on transfer days, a four hour private junk or yacht charter with drinks and crew, M+ and Palace Museum entry, a private half day with a gallery-literate guide, restaurant reservations at the tables that take them, all ferry crossings, a day-by-day document written around the light and the opening hours, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Hong Kong partner team.
Upgrades worth considering
A harbour-facing suite rather than a harbour-facing room, which in Hong Kong is a large step in both space and price. A private car and driver for all five days rather than transfers only. A full day charter rather than four hours, which reaches the outer islands and turns the boat day into the trip. Two nights in Macau at the front or back, which adds a completely different city an hour across the water.
Honest notes
Rooms are small. We say this on every Hong Kong page and we mean it here most of all, because at this price point the gap between expectation and square metres is widest. We will show you the actual room size before you book.
The Peak and the boat both depend on weather, and in March and April the city can sit under low cloud for a week. Both days are built to move.
M+ is excellent and it is a modern museum, which means it is busy at weekends and quiet on a Tuesday morning. We schedule accordingly.
Hong Kong does not have a beach holiday inside it. If part of what you want from these five days is sun and sand, we would add Macau or an island night rather than pretend the city beaches are a resort.
Built by Asaf Zamshtein, who runs our China desk, and checked with our Hong Kong partner team before it goes out.
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