kyshel

violetm--take a look at the luxurylink.com offer for Langham Place
4 nights club prime room, spa pkg (really $$ one), bfasts, one dinner and club priv/wifi included for $1020--is that out of your budget if you get more bang for your buck?
We're buying it for Oct stay. they ahve a suite offer for 3 nights but we really need the extra time.

nmilller1950

bookmarking

Cicerone

Just a few observations on the Langham Place. It is quite a nice and luxurious hotel with a good spa. It is part of a large and rather poorly designed shopping mall that probably will not interest you, but which you will have to get through twice a day or so to get to the MTR. The problem with it is, and the reason it offers such good deals, is that it is in a <i>very</i> secondary location. It is in Mongkok, which is 2 miles from the Kowloon waterfront, which means you will spend a good bit of time in transit getting to the parts of Hong Kong which you want to see. Moreover, it is in a rather dull neighborhood. (It actually is in a mixed industrial and red light district, but as Hong Kong is so safe that is not an issue nor a drawback and this won’t be at all obvious to you, there are no peepshows or anything.) Other than the expensive Michelin restaurants in the hotel, there are no real restaurants of note in the neighborhood. (There are local noodle places of course, where you can get a perfectly fine meal for US$3-5 complete with florescent lights and surly staff, but that is no reason to stay there. You can get that in many places. Tim Ho’s overhyped 1-Star dim sum place would be about a 15-20 minute walk, or a quick cab ride. But then you still have to wait 2-3 hours to eat.) The only thing in the neighborhood is the awful night market, which draws tourists in droves to look at T-shirts, baseball caps, fake Rolexes and each other. (There is a small but interesting neighborhood wet market in the other direction which draws no tourists, but again this is no reason to stay at the Langham. But if you do, please make an effort to go see it.)

To the best of my knowledge, the rooms at the Langham have no harbour views to speak of, other than the Club rooms which are on the top floors, but these are 28 square meters so are not huge. I believe that violetm has a Prime room which is larger room (37 square meters), but won’t offer a harbour view. (I believe that this room comes with access to the club lounge on the upper floor, which is why it is called a Club Prime. Not sure if violetm wants to trade size for view.) The views can be interesting, and some are of Lion Rock which are to me very nice, but it won’t be the picture-postcard view of the harbour. The best harbour view I am aware of is from the spa lounge area, which is indeed very nice on a clear day, albeit the harbour is 2 miles down the road.

I know from violetm’s other posts that she has been to Hong Kong before, and has stayed at the Bishop Lei in Mid-levels. The neighborhoods and ease of access to sights in Hong Kong of those two hotels are quite different. The luxury standards of the hotels are quite different as well, and wanting a luxury hotel is certainly not a crime. Perhaps for a second-time visitor to Hong Kong, the location of the Langham is not such an issue (although I think the time spent one has to spend on the MTR or a bus will get old quite quickly, esp at rush hours if you are standing on the train). However, for a first-time visitor, and for the OP who has 6 days in Hong Kong, I don’t think that the location is very appealing.