Cordis, Hong Kong

It’s been a while since a new major luxury hotel opened in Kowloon, the mainland peninsula side of Hong Kong — height restrictions prevented the construction of skyscraper-hotels like the 42-story Cordis, Hong Kong building. Now that they’ve been lifted, however, the path is clear for megahotels in the new Asian idiom, combining office floors, a massive retail space, and hundreds of upmarket rooms and suites, perched high above the city’s rooftops.

With 664 rooms, it would be a stretch to call Cordis intimate; there’s more to life than hip little boutiques, though, and hospitality on this scale is something altogether different. Rooms are big and smartly appointed, complete with LCD televisions and wireless internet. Bathrooms are marble but modern, all with baths and showers, and every room looks out through full-length windows over views of the city or the harbor.

Business travelers, of course, make up a substantial fraction of Cordis’s clientele, and they’re taken care of in high style — meeting rooms come in all shapes and sizes, and a handful of restaurants ensure that midnight-oil-burning executives need never set foot outside the building. But like most new city luxury hotels, Cordis is equally well suited to leisure travel: the Chuan Spa is of resort quality, and the hotel’s location atop thirteen floors of a shopping center means some of the city’s best shopping is just an elevator ride away.

How to get there: Shuttle bus service from Hong Kong International Airport is available at a cost of HKD 140 per person, one way.