China's 10 Best Hotels

Joe Yogerst October 29, 2008

 

The Forbes Traveler 400 experts pick the top hotels

Much like the Chinese team and their medal haul at the recent Beijing Olympics, the country’s hotel scene has also gone from strength to strength in recent years, emerging from the self-imposed dark age of hospitality that marked the hardcore communist era into a dynamic new world of incredible places to sleep.

Hong Kong has always been a bastion of great hotels. The former British colony is home to half of China's 10 best hotels, as determined by the Forbes Traveler 400 board of experts, who rated nearly 800 of the world's top hotels for their rooms, service, decor, cuisine, public areas, recreational options and location. Until very recently, mainland China lagged behind Hong Kong—20 years ago, there wasn’t a hotel anywhere in the “middle kingdom” that would have made any sort of best list.

See our slideshow of China's 10 Best Hotels.

But how quickly things can change. Fueled by China’s unprecedented economic growth over the past two decades, and the emergence of what may become the world’s largest middle class, the country’s hotel industry has taken off like a rocket. Add to this the urgency of developing new hotels for the 2008 Summer Games and the upcoming 2010 Shanghai World Expo—and three huge cities aggressively competing against one another to become the top Chinese metropolis—and the stage was set for the creation of some truly spectacular digs.

More than any other location, Pudong exemplifies the bold new China and its lavish appetites. Shanghai’s futuristic financial and commercial district is also home to two of the hotels on our list—the Grand Hyatt Shanghai and the Pudong Shangri-La.

Rising from what was little more than rice paddies and vegetable plots a generation ago, Pudong boasts stunning 21^st-century icons like the Oriental Pearl Tower (with its trademark spheres) and the 88-story Jin Mao Tower, one of the world’s top 10 highest buildings. The 555-room Grand Hyatt takes up more than 30 of those stories, including a jaw-dropping atrium that shoots between the 56^th and 87^th floors. Among many other “world bests” the hotel also flaunts the planet’s highest bar and longest laundry shoot.

Some of the best views of the soaring Jin Mao (and the rest of Pudong) are from the upper floors of the nearby Shangri-La, an architectural landmark in its own right with 950 rooms packed into twin glass towers that glimmer at night like giant crystals. With a sort of pseudo-Himalayan décor and treatments based on the five elements (metal, water, wood, fire, earth) the hotel’s Chi spa is one of China’s largest and finest health and beauty retreats.

While the three Shanghai hotels on our list are all tall, sleek and modern (like their host city), our two Beijing abodes could not be more different.

Unveiled in the frenzied run-up to the Olympics, the elliptical Ritz-Carlton, Beijing rises like a blue steel-and-glass castle beside the capital’s bustling Financial Street, unabashedly modern and very much in keeping with the stunning 21^st-century style of the Olympic Village. The Peninsula Beijing, on the other hand, is an architectural homage to China’s past—a traditional gateway facade beneath a pagoda-style roof. Located in the old quarter near Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, the Peninsula’s neighborhood vibe is also the polar opposite.

See our slideshow of China's 10 Best Hotels.

Despite these urban upstarts, Hong Kong is still the undisputed champ of the China hotel scene, and no doubt will be for years to come. Half of our top ten sit on either side of the famous Fragrant Harbor, including several that count among the best places to stay on the entire planet. And despite their relative proximity to one another, they are remarkably different in style and tone.

The sun never really set on the Peninsula, Hong Kong, where the British Empire lives on in the fleet of Rolls-Royces, the spiffy white-clad doormen and high tea in the soaring Edwardian lobby. Eighty years after its 1928 opening, it still feels like the “best hotel east of the Suez.” The waterfront InterContinental could be the world’s most fung shui friendly hotel, with an elongated entrance and glass-walled lobby designed by the original architect to facilitate the passage of the “nine dragons” said to dwell in the mountains behind Kowloon district.

The Conrad, on the other hand, is the brash, modern American hotel, located atop a giant shopping mall and purveyor of the city’s most lavish Sunday brunch. The Landmark Mandarin is like a tiny jewel box, the smallest of the hotels on our China list (113 rooms) and tucked amid the chic fashion boutiques and jewelry stores of Central District to optimize shopping pleasure. And finally, the Four Seasons is all about water—panoramic views from the full-length baths, the signature Aquatic Odyssey treatment at the spa, and that incredible rooftop infinity pool with views that seem to stretch forever.

See our slideshow of China's 10 Best Hotels.

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