So I realise that Shenzhen is probably not at the top of anyone's luxury travel list but after spending the past week there I thought I would share some notes for anything who is visiting from work (or a side trip from HK)

Those considering a side trip from HK now have another option in the very high speed train from West Kowloon station which in theory takes only 14 minutes to get you to Futian station in Shenzhen (near the luxury hotels). However buying a ticket and going through immigration can take an hour or two. If they fix the totally inefficient ticket buying system then this will be an excellent option, until then, perhaps taking a hotel car is less hassle.

Shenzhen itself is interesting from both a historical and contemporary perspective. It is where Deng changed the course of history in 1992 by visiting what we then a sleepy fishing town and planted a tree and proclaiming "To be rich is glorious", this beginning the economic journey what we have seen in China in over the past three decades. To see the sleepy fishing town today from Futian it feels like a hypersonic futuristic Singapore, and to see it from the 96th floor at the St Regis is just looks vast, absolutely vast.

Ok, the good stuff, luxury hotels:

Ritz Carlton - overall design is less contemporary high-tech than FS and St Regis but I love it. Even the lead-in category room layout is fantastic. Service across the board is warm and efficient and quite polished. Most importantly, they seem to have "Hong Kong internet", ie no firewall so you can access Gmail etc without a VPN - a big advantage from my perspective. Club lounge and my room had a fantastic view of the modern skyline of Futian. This would definitely be my recommendation

Four Seasons - only about 200m from the RC. The design feels like a brand new Novotel with more expensive artwork. The club lounge and the room I was assigned faced the much less attractive older skyline (basically opposite to the RC) which I didn't like. The club lounge floor had been taken over with some business event so felt like a zoo. There was construction work happening in the club lounge. While the RC club lounge felt like a warm enclave to hang out in all day if you want to, the FS definitely was not

St Regis - about 5km away from RC and FS in an area next to a nice park, The St Regis's advantage is being in the top 20 floors of a 100 story building. There are few tall buildings nearby so the views are incredible. The public spaces are beautifully designed but relatively small so they have to work pretty hard to keep gawking tourists out. The room layout for an upgraded category ("Good Fortune View" or something like that, it was on the very auspicious 88th floor) The service on arrival and departure was a bit all over the place and the checkin desks were literally a mess. Overall I felt the service at the hotel was mechanistic and kind of sterile but it's hard to tell how much was just language barrier

Food at both RC and St Regis was fantastic (I didn't stay at the FS for long enough to try it). I am glad that I left when I did as I was concerned that I would actually turn into a dumpling myself if I ate any more dumplings at breakfast

From Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons you can walk to and through a vast network of shopping malls where I think you could buy anything you could possibly want (Western or Chinese).


View from my room at the St Regis

View from my room at Ritz Carlton