A while back in December 2025, I had the opportunity to stay at the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong. Specifically, I paid for an upgrade to the Club Victoria King room, part of the Club Lounge level.
It was an experience not to be forgotten. You know how much I love Hong Kong — and yet we barely left the building. We spent almost the entire stay inside the hotel. That should tell you something.
Table of Contents
The Hotel: A Hotel That Starts Where Other Hotels End
The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong doesn’t have a ground floor lobby. It doesn’t really have a ground floor at all.
The hotel occupies floors 102 to 118 of the International Commerce Centre in West Kowloon — the tallest building in Hong Kong, and for a while one of the tallest in the world. Everything sits on top: the rooms, the restaurants, the pool, the bar. Nothing about the arrival at street level prepares you for it, because at street level you’re just walking through a shopping mall.
A few numbers worth having, because they’re the reason people book here in the first place. It is the highest hotel in the world. The swimming pool on 118 is amazing right at the top of the hotel, giving you a special feeling when swimming there. The building is described as 118 storeys, though only around 108 of those exist above ground — the numbering skips the unlucky fours, which is a very Hong Kong solution to a very Chinese problem.
The Club Lounge, which is the entire reason we paid to upgrade, sits on the 116th floor. More on that later.
The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong : Getting There
We took the Airport Express from HKIA to Kowloon Station and walked the rest of the way. Trains run about every ten minutes and the ride is roughly 22 minutes with a single stop. Kowloon Station sits directly beneath the ICC, so you never step outside, never queue for a taxi, and never negotiate a fare — which, arriving with luggage, is worth a lot.
From the station you walk into Elements, the upscale mall at the base of the tower. The signage is clear, the walk is flat and air-conditioned, and it isn’t difficult. But I’ll be honest: it’s a slightly deflating way to arrive at a hotel of this calibre. You spend the whole approach wheeling your bags past mall shopfronts, and there’s no moment where the building announces itself. No driveway, no doorman stepping forward, no pause. You just… turn a corner and there’s the hotel entrance.
And yes our model was there with us on our trip !
Guests who arrive by car get the proper porte-cochère treatment. Guests who take the train — which is most people, because the train is genuinely the smarter option — get the mall. If you’re the sort who enjoys the theatre of checking into a five-star hotel, be prepared for that part to be missing.
With its fleet of VERY EXPENSIVE Rolls-Royces and Bentleys…
The redemption comes at the lifts. Staff direct you to the express lift, and it takes you to reception on the 103rd floor in under a minute. Your ears pop. That’s the moment the hotel actually starts.
One thing that catches first-timers out: 103 is not where your room is. You check in there, then switch to a second bank of lifts to reach the guest floors. It feels convoluted the first time and completely normal by the second.
Other ways in: Kowloon Station is on the Tung Chung line, and Austin Station on the Tuen Ma line connects into the same complex. If you’re arriving from the mainland by high-speed rail, Hong Kong West Kowloon Station is a short covered walk away.
Check-In: No Counter, No Queue
Here’s where the hotel makes up for the mall.
Club guests don’t check in at the reception on 103. We stepped out of the express lift into the lobby and were met there — not directed to a counter, but personally met, then taken to a separate lift and brought up to the Club Lounge on the 116th floor. The check-in happens up there, sitting down.
There is no counter. Nobody stands opposite you across a desk with a screen between them. We were shown to a seat, our passports were taken, and then the paperwork disappeared somewhere else while we sat and looked out at Hong Kong from 465 metres up. It’s a small structural difference and it changes the entire feel of arriving. Checking in stops being an administrative step you get through and becomes the first nice thing that happens to you.
I have to show you photos of the “keys” to the room. Yes, I am a snob.
We also got a list of all the benefits of being a member of the Club.
We were offered a long list of drinks — and I mean a long list, alcohol included, at whatever hour you happen to walk in. We had coffee. Somewhere between deplaning, the Airport Express and the walk through Elements, coffee was what we wanted, and it turned out to be the right call.
Then we realised what time it was.
We’d arrived slap in the middle of afternoon tea, one of the five daily food presentations in the Club Lounge, and the entire spread was already laid out. So before we had even seen our room, we were working our way through a full afternoon tea. Nobody suggested we should check in first, or come back later, or wait. The food was there and we were there, so we ate.
And we ordered the famous Ritz-Carlton afternoon tea. WONDERFUL. And then they brought out the trays. Three tiers of polished silver, pastries and savoury bites, sitting on a table a hundred-odd floors above Victoria Harbour. It’s the sort of thing you’d normally book weeks ahead and pay properly for. Here it just arrives…..
The room, as it turned out, was ready. We just didn’t go to it. We stayed in the lounge a while longer instead — which, in hindsight, set the tone for the entire stay.
If you’re weighing up whether the Club upgrade is worth it, this is the first thing you get for your money, before a single glass of champagne is poured. And it’s worth more than it sounds, because arrival is the moment you’re most tired, most laden with bags and least inclined to stand in a queue. Instead we were sitting down with coffee and scones, thirteen floors above the reception desk we never went to.
The Club Victoria King Room
The room does one thing before anything else: it shows you the harbour.
Welcome to the room
And here’s our model enjoying the view…
The window runs the full width of the room, floor to ceiling, with a padded bench built into the sill so you can sit right up against the glass. From up here you’re looking straight across Victoria Harbour at Hong Kong Island — the whole ridge of Central and Wan Chai laid out below, the ferries crossing, the mountains behind. On a clear afternoon you can pick out individual buildings. On a hazier one the city fades into grey-blue and looks like a watercolour. We got both during a single stay.
Everything else in the room is arranged so the window wins. The bed faces it. The desk sits beside it. The armchair and ottoman are angled towards it. Whoever laid this room out understood exactly what people are paying for.
A note on the name. Your booking confirmation will call this a Deluxe Guest Room with Victoria Harbour View. “Club Victoria King” is what it becomes once you add the Club supplement — same room, same floor plan, plus a key card that works on 116. Don’t be confused if the two names don’t match.
The room itself
Dark and warm rather than bright and minimal. Deep carpet, bronze-toned leather panelling around the television, black marble consoles with a heavy white vein running through them, and a carved black screen by the window that gives the whole thing a Chinese accent without tipping into theme-park territory.
The bed is a king with a broad olive-gold leather headboard and a leather bench at the foot. Nightstands either side, each with a bottle of water and a clock. The desk is proper working furniture — full-size, with a leather task chair on castors positioned so you’re looking out over the harbour while you work. I sat there. I did not work.
The very comfortable chair next to the bed gives a great view and is damn romantic at night…
The television greets you by name when you walk in, which is a small thing that everyone does now and which still, annoyingly, works.
The minibar, which is a piece of furniture
This is where the room stops feeling like a nice hotel room and starts feeling expensive.
The minibar is a full-height glass display cabinet — lit, mirrored, with a red hand-blown glass sculpture on the top shelf as if it were a vitrine in a shop. Below that: proper wine glasses, a gold cocktail shaker, and the spirits. Johnnie Walker Blue Label. The Botanist gin. And a bottle of Our/London Vodka blended and bottled specifically for The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong, which is the sort of detail I find very hard to be cynical about.
Alongside those, Valrhona Guanaja 70%, a black scented candle made exclusively for the property, and the hotel’s own single-origin Ecuadorian 56% dark chocolate bar sitting on a wooden tray.
The coffee setup underneath is a Nespresso machine, a Toshiba kettle, a drawer of capsules and tea sachets, and two 750ml glass bottles of water. Everything black, everything matched.
Worth being clear: this is an honour bar. Most of what’s in that cabinet is chargeable. The Club Lounge is where the free-flow drinking happens.
The cabinet is beautiful. The contents are thinner than they look — and once you’ve seen what Raffles Sentosa puts in a minibar, this feels like a display case with not very much in it.
The bathroom
Stone throughout — pale travertine, floor to ceiling, with a separate bathtub and a walk-in shower rather than the usual compromise of one inside the other. For a room in the entry-level category, that’s more than you’d expect.
The shower is the highlight: a large enclosure with both a rain head and a handheld, a built-in bench, and a recessed niche holding the toiletries.
Amenities are Diptyque, in the Philosykos range — full-size 300ml pump bottles of shampoo, conditioner and hand and body lotion, not sachets. The older reviews of this hotel all mention Asprey, so this has changed at some point, and Diptyque is a clear upgrade.
There’s also a lacquered amenity box with everything boxed and labelled in English and Chinese: toothbrushes, toothpaste by Lebon, comb, cotton buds, cotton rounds, emery board, shower cap. A card notes a shaving kit is available on request.
Mouthwash comes in a small glass bottle rather than a plastic one, which tells you roughly how far the attention to detail goes. I am a sucker for anyone who gives me mouth wash without me asking for it…
Turndown
Evening turndown happens while you’re out — or, in our case, while we were upstairs in the lounge. You come back to the bed turned down, the curtains drawn, the lights dimmed to something softer, and the room reset. It’s a small ritual and it’s one of the reasons a one-night stay here feels longer than one night.
The Pool and the Gym, at the Top of Everything
Both sit near the very top of the building, which is to say: above almost everything else in Hong Kong.
We went up in the morning. JY ran on the treadmill; I did not. The gym is genuinely well equipped — full cardio, free weights, water and towels laid out — and unremarkable in every way except one, which is that you are running at a window several hundred metres above Kowloon. Same machines you’d find anywhere. Completely different experience.
Then the pool, which is the one people actually come for. It’s indoors, heated, and sits at the top of the hotel — the highest swimming pool in Hong Kong. The far wall is a vast screen playing shifting imagery, so you swim towards light and colour rather than towards a tiled end.
We swam. In December.
Which is the point of an indoor pool up here: outside it was somewhere in the high teens and grey, and inside we were in warm water at the top of the tallest building in the city with the whole thing to ourselves. It costs nothing extra once you’ve booked the room, and it’s the sort of thing you remember longer than most of what you paid for.
The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong Club Lounge: Is the Upgrade Worth It?
We paid HKD 1,470 plus service charge for the Club upgrade, on top of a total of HKD 6,312 for one night in December 2025. So the Club portion was roughly a quarter of the bill.
Here’s the honest arithmetic. Five food presentations a day, free-flow champagne and wine, a dedicated concierge, and a check-in that happens sitting down with a coffee in your hand. If you’re the sort of traveller who lands, drops the bags and immediately heads out to eat your way through Kowloon, none of that is worth paying for. Hong Kong is one of the great eating cities on earth and the Club Lounge would just be an expensive room you never sit in.
We did the opposite. We arrived, went up to 116, and barely came down. Afternoon tea before we’d even seen the room. Drinks in the evening looking at the harbour. A run and a swim at the top of the building the next morning. For a one-night stay where the hotel is the destination, the upgrade paid for itself several times over — and I say that as someone who normally thinks club access is a con.
The room is beautiful. The view is the reason to book. But the Club is the reason we never left.
