Originally Posted by
mcgahat
Why not split the difference and just stay at the Hilton Garden Inn the first night? I am assuming you have some Hilton status thus the free breakfast comment about Conrad. I completely understand not wanting to pay full price for the Conrad with the late arrival but if you need to get into the city anyways......the stay at a hotel in the city. Even if it is just a cheaper hotel with no program affiliation. Hong Kong taxi driver can be a little quirky (like most) but always found them to be pretty good and safe....your driver experience is a one off I think.
I like the Marriott a lot but that rate is pretty high so I would be inclined to find something cheaper in the city myself.
Marriott's just a hair over 2000HKD, but that includes tax/svc & breakfast for 4. It's still definitely higher than what I would've preferred to pay, but there just aren't many options when you've got a party of 2 adults & 2 kids. There's only a handful of hotels that allow such occupancy (only reason Conrad and probably also HGI would allow it is my status). If it were 2 adults & 1 kid, we could be staying at BP International for <1000HKD, breakfast included.
HGI is more expensive than you think. Their lowest refundable rate for their cheapest room is usually >1300HKD inc tax/svc. For our date, they're running >1600HKD. To me, a price difference of 400HKD is not worth choosing HGI over Marriott, esp given HGI's mediocre reviews and tiny room sizes and Mongkok location (not my favorite).
I did consider Royal Plaza, which will be ~200HKD cheaper than Marriott. But I decided against it, because again I'm not a huge fan of staying in the Mongkok area and because of our scary late-night airport taxi experience. I'm not sure that the taxi thing was one-off... this has been discussed in HKG forum and apparently this type of stuff happens a lot (tired/sleepy drivers).