View from the Room - The Emperor Hotel, Hong Kong

The lift

Our tree and stockings on Christmas Eve

The lobby

New Year's Eve

The Emperor Hotel is a few minutes walk away from Times Square, the gem in the shopping haven that is Causeway Bay with it’s multiple malls, restaurants and streets lined with more shops. The hotel is pretty new and absolutely everything works. Our executive corner room 1603 (on the 16th floor) had a fantastic view of the city day and night. Even better, we had a spectacular view of the new year’s Eve fireworks.

The hotel itself is an attraction, with its light show and Michelin restaurant (a little too shark fin-based for me) and the Monkey Cafe where we ate the included breakfast most mornings.

Room

The design has a Japanese flavour although with an odd lack of drawers.

• Large bed with 4 pillows

• 2 bedside drawers attached to the wall

• Double wardrobe with 5 wooden hangers (more plastic ones bought up immediately upon request)

• Chair & occasional table

• Padded seating on the bench along the window

• Full length mirror near the door (power point in reach)

• Tea/coffee making on a shelf

• Large TV on the wall
  

Power

Bedside sockets on each side
2 USB sockets on one side (mine)
1 wall socket by TV

Lighting

The room had pretty innovative lighting hidden behind wooden panels and night lights all the way through to the bathroom.

There are two bedside lights on each side including  fantastic reading lights
Apart from the bedside controls, there is a master light switch by the door to turn every off other than the bedside lights.

Whilst there was a lot of thought gone into the lighting, the room was too dark and I found the buttons quite hard to press in, particularly when getting on in the middle of the night and rushing to the toilet!

Bathroom

This is roomy and clean although also too dark.

The extractor only worked with the light so it was a little noisy when relaxing in the bath

Toiletries

-No soap or body lotion

-Shower gel

-Shampoo

-Conditioner

-Tooth brush, cotton buds/wool, shower cap

• 2 absorbent and soft bath towels

• 2 hand towels

• 2 face cloths

• Absorbent bath mat

• Hand shower

• Powerful taps (although hot water takes time to come through)

• 2 open shelves under sink

• Towel rail and further storage space underneath

• Big mirror and a lit up shaving mirror

Amenities

• Air con - although we couldn’t get it run warm on the couple of days when the temperature dropped

• Kettle & instant tea/coffee

• 2 cups and saucers and glasses

• Bottled water replaced most days

• Safe

• Hairdryer

• Slippers

• Bathrobes

• Mini-fridge

There are two downsides to this place that took a little getting used to. I’ve never before stayed in a hotel that lacked hand soap, even the terrible budget hotels have this basic. It was quickly rectified by ample mini bottles of shower gel being bought up within minutes when I phone down. It took a bit of getting used as did the queuing for breakfast.

There was no booking system and the breakfast room certainly could not fit guests from 299 rooms. Each morning at certain times, a large queue would form all along the lift areas. We are there during the Christmas holiday so I imagine it will be different at other times, however, reservations or staggered times would work better. Twice we didn’t bother, at other times we took it in turns to queue while researching and planning for the day on our phones.

Room 1603 is spacious and comfortable and the staff were polite with their recognition when we bumped into them in corridors and lifts.

I loved that the lift had a different rug each day telling us what day it is; a very helpful attention to detail (if only I’d noticed before the third morning)

The contrast of staying on Hong Kong Island versus the Kowloon side last time is vast. Whilst I decided I prefer that the more Chinese side of HK, The Emperor Hotel made our stay incredibly welcome and relaxed. The fantastic housekeeping staff took to our Christmas bears and we arrived back to the room to see they’d lovingly tucked them into the bed.