Rosewood Hong Kong

Eighteen Salisbury Road, on the Kowloon shore of Victoria Harbour, was for four decades the address of the New World Centre, a shopping and hotel complex built by the Cheng family on the former Holt's Wharf godowns. Its demolition cleared the ground for Victoria Dockside, and Rosewood Hong Kong opened there on 17 March 2019 as the flagship of a hotel group the same family owns.

History

New World Development, the property company founded by Cheng Yu-tung, bought the Dallas-based Rosewood Hotels & Resorts in 2011 and placed Sonia Cheng, the founder's granddaughter, at the head of the enlarged Rosewood Hotel Group. The Hong Kong hotel was conceived from the start as the brand's home address, and the family's name runs through the building: the Cantonese restaurant is called The Legacy House, and the all-day café takes its name from Holt's Wharf, the Swire-owned cargo wharf that occupied the site until the 1970s.

The hotel is the anchor of Victoria Dockside, a 3-million-square-foot art and design district that also contains the K11 Musea shopping and cultural complex and stands beside the renovated Hong Kong Museum of Art.

Architecture and design

Kohn Pedersen Fox designed the 65-storey tower, a slender glass block set back from the promenade with planted terraces at its base. Tony Chi, the New York interior designer, treated the public rooms as a vertical estate rather than a conventional lobby hotel: arrivals pass through a garden forecourt, and the main reception sits several floors up with the harbour behind it. The long-stay Rosewood Residences share the tower with the hotel, and the Manor Club on the 40th floor serves as a private lounge for suite and club guests.

Rooms and suites

The 413 rooms and suites are among the largest in the city, and most face the harbour and the Hong Kong Island skyline. The top of the range is the Harbour House, a two-floor suite with its own terrace and pool. Chi's rooms use dark timber, brass and deep sofas rather than the pale palette common in new Asian hotels.

Dining

The restaurants are organised as a cluster of distinct houses. The Legacy House serves Cantonese cooking from the Shunde tradition. Henry is a steak and smokehouse. Chaat, the Indian restaurant on the fifth floor, holds a Michelin star. Holt's Café is the all-day room, Bayfare Social serves Spanish food on the promenade level, and the Butterfly Room is the afternoon tea salon. DarkSide, the bar, takes its name from the old Hong Kong Island joke about Kowloon and programmes live jazz most nights.

Wellness

Asaya, Rosewood's wellness brand, occupies the sixth floor with treatment rooms, a gym and an outdoor infinity pool that looks across the water to Central.

Weddings and events

The Grand Ballroom is the principal space, with a foyer and a run of smaller function rooms on the same floor, and the hotel hosts Chinese banquets, Western-style weddings and corporate meetings throughout the year. The Harbour House terrace and the outdoor areas at Asaya are used for smaller private receptions. Victoria Dockside's own event venues and the K11 Musea next door add exhibition and gala capacity beyond the hotel itself.

Location

The hotel sits on Salisbury Road at the eastern end of the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, with the Avenue of Stars promenade at its feet. The Star Ferry pier to Central and the Hong Kong Cultural Centre are about ten minutes on foot. East Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station is the closest rail stop; West Kowloon station, the terminus of the high-speed line to Shenzhen and Guangzhou, is a short taxi ride. Hong Kong International Airport is about 40 minutes by car. A luxury hotel in Hong Kong on the Kowloon side has the one view the Island hotels cannot offer: the full skyline across the harbour.