The Travel Critic

Right, so here we are then, in Hong Kong, a city that is less a place and more a bloody organism. It doesn’t sleep, it doesn’t yawn, it doesn’t even pause to scratch itself. It just goes. Ceaselessly. A thrum, a vibration, a caffeinated whirring of humanity that makes New York look like it’s having a nap. And into this electric soup you drop a W Hotel and, well, the thing starts fizzing like someone’s lobbed a Berocca into a gin and tonic.

Now, the W isn’t for everyone. If you like your hotels beige, hushed, and smelling faintly of boiled cabbage and retreating accountants, then bugger off to the Peninsula and leave the rest of us in peace. The W is a vibe. It is neon and basslines and cocktails mixed by someone who looks like they were bred in a warehouse rave. And crucially, it gets Hong Kong. It doesn’t try to slow it down or contain it—it matches its stride, heel for heel, beat for beat.

The first good decision: reception is not on the ground floor. Nothing of interest is ever on the ground floor in Hong Kong anyway (other than the occasional noodle shop that can change your life for £4). The W puts its welcome desk up on the sixth floor, which means by the time you get there, you’ve ascended into a sort of members’ club. No baggage of the street, no gawping Parker family in cargo shorts wondering if “they do fries”. Just a slick, elevated hum of energy. It makes arriving feel less like checking in, more like being inducted.

The service? Oh, please. Of course it’s impeccable. At this level it’s always impeccable. But there’s impeccable and then there’s impeccable-with-a-beat. The W runs on rhythm. Staff move with the music, literally in time with it. You half expect them to break into a synchronised dance routine while handing over your key card. And look, I don’t usually namecheck staff because it’s a slippery slope into the kind of tripadvisor hell where Karen bangs on about how “Janet on concierge went above and beyond to source gluten-free oatcakes”. But credit where credit’s due: René Tsang, the “Experience Manager”, is one of those rare hotel people who manages to be both effortlessly cool and genuinely helpful without either cancelling the other out. She made me feel as if everything was possible but also that she had it all in hand. That’s a trick most hotels never master.

The rooms are modern in the way Apple is modern. Clean, shiny, slightly smug. Everything you could want is in there, and everything you could want to nick already has a discreet price tag on it. That’s just clever, frankly. Saves the awkward conversation at check-out when you’ve “accidentally packed” the Bluetooth speaker. The bed is huge, the view is bigger, and there’s enough mood lighting to make even me look Instagrammable.

But the jewel, the proper trump card, is the pool. A rectangle of calm suspended high above the lunatic city below. Hong Kong thrashes and writhes down there, and up here you float. It’s a sanctuary, but not a boring one. The skyline presses in, ships nose through the harbour, cranes swing their metal arms—and yet you’re horizontal in the water, cocktail on the side, suddenly at peace. It’s the sort of contrast only Hong Kong can really pull off: serenity by way of chaos.

So yes, the W Hong Kong doesn’t just sit in the city, it plays in time with it. It’s Hong Kong distilled—high, fast, loud, stylish, and very slightly ridiculous. Which is precisely why it works.