u/omdongi

Wanted to get people’s takes because I just had a completely unremarkable stay at Rosewood Hong Kong, the supposed “best hotel in the world” according to some rankings or whatever that means. Regardless, having been to Hong Kong before, stayed at other properties, heard a lot about the Rosewood brand, I certainly had high expectations.

And I wanted to get second opinions on whether I just caught them at a bad time, am I just completely out of touch on what to expect at luxury properties like this, or maybe I’m just not the target demographic for them. I’ll share the background context and be as objective as possible to let people decide for themselves.

Property itself is beautiful and well-designed, rooms are well-appointed and very spacious with amazing views. The facilities are very new and well-maintained, although somethings aren’t to my personal preference like the gym equipment was all new-style with strange cable grips vs the more traditional equipment that’s easier to use imo.

But I’ll share what I considered to be actual issues, some of them may be nitpicky, but I’ve seen other luxury hotels in places like Bangkok, Tokyo, etc. handle it much better.

- No assistance with the car door or baggage. While I personally can fully manage on my own, my impression at all other top hotels is that their ground staff assist with opening the doors, taking the bags out of the trunk, etc.

- No welcome drink or water offered at check-in. This one felt odd to me because other guests checking in at the same time were literally being offered welcome drinks and water right next to me. Maybe it was just this particular check-in staff?

- Wonkiness with in-room items. Some of the bath towels had red stains (looked like lipstick) on them. The guest services hotel phone started malfunctioning after one call and we had to switch to using WhatsApp instead to communicate with them.

- Service at breakfast was slow and inconsistent. We had ordered various breakfast items, but some of them just never came out after 30 minutes, so we had to check back with them in order to get them brought to the table. Towards the end, some of the items were just simply never delivered, and we gave up at that point since we were close to finishing anyways.

- Legacy House, one of their Michelin star restaurants, was just completely underwhelming. Despite having made reservations and showing up on time, we still had to wait close to 10 or 15 minutes for our table to be ready. Service and food was average, it felt very close to a typical higher-end Chinese restaurant in terms of taste and quality that would probably be half of the price vs something truly exceptional.

- Bill was incorrectly settled. Despite having pre-paid online already and acknowledging it at check-in, they then charged us again for the room at check-out several days laters.

Certainly none of these issues are deal-breakers, but there seemed to just be so much friction and carelessness and the service felt very prompted rather than proactive. Given Rosewood does charge a premium compared to its competitors and some of the more mid-level 5 star hotels in Hong Kong, I would’ve expected it to be significantly more polished and better. For example, Grand Hyatt Hong Kong is 1/3 to 1/2 the price of Rosewood, and aside from the base room being a bit smaller, I didn’t feel like the Rosewood was substantively higher level and honestly worse in some ways. The bar for luxury hotels in Hong Kong is already quite excellent, and perhaps I just don’t get paying for more, when the differences in quality are marginal.

In conclusion, I’m not sure how this property has been like for others. I’ve seen the rave reviews and ranking lists, I’m just not sure it lived up to what I was expecting or maybe I’m just better off booking cheaper hotels rather than the supposed “top-end”.