Will this new fifty floor Kowloon hotel with killer views become a new luxury landmark?
There is a particular species of rooftop bar that understands its brief. The one at the Kimpton Tsim Sha Tsui, fifty storeys above the harbour, it transcends. The Swim Club, as it is called, manages the unlikely feat of feeling like California and Kowloon simultaneously: a heated twenty-metre pool where bathers sip cocktails and watch the ferries making their way across Hong Kong’s famous harbour. The city opens below like a fan, glittering and vertiginous, and for a moment you forget you are in one of the most densely populated places on earth.
It is this lightness of touch that characterises the hotel, which just opened ion the corner of Middle Road in Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon side. The V-shaped facade rises fifty storeys, engineered for a single, rather splendid obsession: every one of its 495 rooms faces the water. In a city with famously expensive real estate, this feels like a design coup.
Later this year, two-Michelin-starred chef Vicky Lau, of Tate Dining Room fame, will open JĪJĀ here, showcasing the punchy, complex flavours of Southwestern China. The grand opening just happened, giving media, influencers and VIPs a much anticipated preview into the most talked about luxury hotel opening for years. This tall imposing building has a message. And in Hong Kong, we are paying attention.
