Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong

Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong opened in 1963 on the waterfront of Central, on the site of the colonial Queen's Building, facing Hong Kong harbour and a short walk from the Star Ferry. It is the hotel from which the Mandarin Oriental group grew, and since the spring of 2025 it has been renovated in phases, without closing, in a programme due to finish at the end of 2026.

It was planned as a statement about what Hong Kong could become.

The Mandarin

The project was announced in 1960 as the Queen's Hotel, an idea of Hugh Barton, then chairman of Hongkong Land, and was renamed The Mandarin before it opened. The architect was John Howarth of Leigh & Orange; the interiors were given to Don Ashton, a film designer who had been art director of The Bridge on the River Kwai. When it was finished it was the tallest building in the city, and it offered what few hotels in Asia then did: a bath in every room and a telephone that guests could dial themselves.

In 1974 the company took a stake in The Oriental in Bangkok, and the two names were joined. The Hong Kong hotel took the name Mandarin Oriental in 1988, and the group that now carries it across four continents still treats it, together with Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, as one of its two founding houses.

Rooms that are rebuilt, not replaced

The building has been renewed from the inside several times. In 2005 it closed for almost a year for a renovation of about US$150 million; Terence Conran redesigned the Mandarin Grill + Bar, and the world's first Krug Room opened when the hotel came back in 2006. A further six-month refurbishment followed in 2020.

The current programme divides the house between three designers. Hubert de Malherbe has the public spaces, including a new lobby and arrival and a whisky bar with a cigar room; Jeffrey Wilkes, who has worked on the hotel for years, is refreshing every room and suite and adding eleven residences; Thierry Lemaire has the signature suites.

The rooms people come back for

Much of the hotel's reputation sits in rooms that have barely changed their purpose in sixty years. The Captain's Bar has served drinks for more than half a century, and the Cake Shop has sold pastries since the 1970s. The Chinnery was conceived as a gentlemen's club and opened to women only in 1990. The Clipper Lounge is the hotel's meeting place through the day.

For dinner the choice runs from Cantonese cooking at Man Wah to the Mandarin Grill + Bar and The Aubrey, a Japanese izakaya bar. Across the street, in the Landmark complex, the group runs a second hotel, The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, which is a different idea of Central: newer, smaller and built around its rooms rather than its history.

Along this stretch of the harbour, The Peninsula on the Kowloon side is the other old name. The two have been compared for six decades, and they answer different questions: The Peninsula looks across the water at the island, and Mandarin Oriental stands in the middle of it.

Sources: Mandarin Oriental; Cathay Pacific; OKYTO.