Dorsett Kai Tak, Hong Kong — Hotel in Hong Kong

We’ve experienced different types/stars of accommodation and for someone claiming to be a 5-star hotel, we are overall disappointed in comparison to other 5-star hotels that we have experienced so far. 3-4 possibly, but for now, 5-star is not a fit rating specifically for the Kai Tak location. If we are to go back to Hong Kong, Dorsett Kai Tak might be one of the last options that we’ll go with. This is from services to hospitality to rooms to even the restaurant.

Breakdown:

Rooms — My family and I booked 2 rooms (1 triple, 180 sports good for 2pax). The triple room was not worth it and is unfair for any group of 3’s booking this accommodation. overall size of the room is not accommodating to 3 people. Yes, there are 3 single beds and the photos they posted might look good, but moving around and placement of luggages was not taken into consideration for a group of 3 who will be staying. Toiletries: No bidet, but tissue paper was provided one roll only. So, if it’s a group of 3 using the toilet, would 1 roll of tissue paper be enough? You get what I mean, sarcastically.

On-Call + Other Services — Housekeeping, Room Service, Bellboy We arrived around 1am in the morning because of a delayed flight. No bellboy or doorman is available to assist us after enduring a long wait in the airport and traveling. And again, this is based on experience with other 5-star hotels Housekeeping: I get that there’s a schedule that they’re following which was before 10am, hang the housekeeping door request so that they know. But again, in comparison with other 5-star hotels, on-call services including housekeeping should be available at anytime that guests would need it. Shuttle Service: This was the cherry on top with our experience in Dorsett Kai Tak. We were waiting for more than 30mins for the shuttle service coming from Airside Mall, then the bus just passed by. It was less than a minute of stopping and looking if there were hotel guests waiting. We called the front desk and just told us the “heavy traffic” reasoning but when we booked our own Uber, we were back in the hotel same travel time, where our airport transfer ride was waiting for us for almost 45mins already because of the shuttle service mishap. And yes, as a “5-star hotel”, they DON’T have any car services available or any efforts to connect us to any car services in the area. (This is targeted more on the airport transfer category) Restaurant: all i can say is — food is decent since we just had the included breakfast buffet but still need to do and work on a lot to make it at par with other restaurants of 5-star hotels out there.

Hospitality Hong Kong is a Chinese country, we get that. But Hong Kong has been known to be a gateway for East Asia where different nationalities come and go, making it a tourist destination as well. Based on our experience from different locations/countries/accommodations here in Asia, basic english is a must to be able to communicate with guests. With our experience here in Dorsett, their staff needs a little bit more training in the communication department. I’m not saying that they have to be fluent and great with english, but a certain level where they can communicate in it. Shuttle driver totally ignored us when we asked for a schedule of the drops/pickups. Not even looked at us and just handed us a piece of paper — talk about rude. Front Desk: being in the frontline of communicating and facing all possible nationalities of guests, they should be the ones most adept in speaking the language. We felt the struggle of their different front desk staff when explaining things — from inquiries to setting bills, etc. Every staff in the lobby is gloomy and not hospitable.

Location Far from everything and shuttle service (or driver) sucks.

This is not to pull down Dorsett but hoping that this review can shed their management and marketing some light for improvements that they can still do. 👀

Although, we’re sticking to our review of this hotel being a 3-star or 4-star at most, NOT A...

This hotel is declared as 5-stars hotel, even though we do not have high expectations we still decided to give it a try for 2D1N staycation deal package in Late Oct because this hotel is new with new facilities. Right after our booking is confirmed, the hotel staff emailed us about the swimming pool is not open. We then called the hotel for clarification and the staff explained the swimming pool is not open because the summer season is over. Though the day after we got noticed about the unavailability of swimming pool,the social post was still promoting it. Believe the top priority for the hotel is to strengthen its internal communications across, and service standard of staff at front desk or client services.

The Airside Mall CS staff doesn’t know about the hotel shuttle bus and the shuttle bus driver doesn’t know the hotel name in English, hence it took us a while to clarify if it is the right bus to the hotel at the Airside pick-up point. Overnight parking at hotel charges for HK$800 which is over priced (ref: HK Disneyland Hotel parking HK$100).

We informed the hotel at booking about our stay was for birthday celebrations. The hotel specially provided birthday greeting balloons and a whole chocolate cake in the room. We are happy with this special arrangements provided by the hotel.

Our room is located on 15/F (the top floor of the hotel is 16/F for suite), which is very pleasant for us, as it’s also the floor where the swimming pool and the bar is, when we used the swimming pool, we don’t need to take the elevator when in our swimsuits, as NO changing room nor shower room at the swimming pool, just one washroom for disabled, and no swimsuits dryer is provided, imagine you have to return to your room in wet swimsuits.

The 24-hours fitness center is located at 2/F, with lots of new fitness facilities and is acceptably spacious, it is ideal for those who have regular workout routine, peak hours are late afternoon around 3-6pm, you can choose non peak hours if you don’t prefer exercising at packed and busy gym room.

The breakfast buffet serves at the 2/F from 6-10am, food variety isn’t a lot but is okay for typical appetite. Just that the food counters is weirdly set up at the small and narrow dead-end corner which allows 2 people there at a time, hence it’s hard to smoothly get the food when it’s busy...

I would say this is a 4 star hotel from a unbiased standpoint, my stay was not the best and would certainly be better at other 5-star hotels in HK and personally I would give my stay 3 stars. If you really care about your hotel whilst on holiday, I would say DO NOT stay here, but if you prefer to spend most of your time outside, this would be a perfect option in terms of value, location at the time of posting.

Rooms are worthy of a 4.5 star rating, it has features that are worthy of a 5-star hotel but when compared to other 5-star hotels, the rooms are not of the same category in terms of design and aura. The lobby is also pretty tiny which doesn’t give that 5-star vibe coming from a 5-star hotel.

Service is below average at best, the cleaning of the rooms are extremely disappointing and way below-par when compared to other 5-star hotels. They never vacuumed the floor the entire duration of my stay and I have just no words to describe the lack of effort from cleaning staff when it comes to cleaning the room and especially the bathroom. The receptionists and staff at the lobby however, are always polite and helpful and greets you with a smile every time you walk through the lobby and sometimes they even have candy in the lobby. The only reason I gave it a 1 is because the majority of my family rates it a 1 in this category.

Location of the hotel is pretty good, above average in this aspect. The main reason it’s a 4-star in this category is because of its lack of accessibility to taxis and Uber drivers, most taxi drivers and even Uber-taxi don’t even know this hotel exists at the time of posting and it’s pretty pricy to get to Mongkok, Tsim Tsa Tsui and other popular districts. However the hotel is a 10-minute walk from 2 MTR stations, so it’s relatively easy and cheap still to get to those touristy districts ONLY IF YOU GO BY MTR and there are also the Kai Tak Sports Park and new shopping malls namely SOGO and AIRSIDE that are extremely close to the hotel that tourists can check out. Ultimately it’s still less convenient compared to other hotels that are located directly next to or in touristy districts that are in Mongkok or elsewhere so I would still say it’s a 4-star in terms of its location and...