4 Nights at the W Hong Kong Using Credit Card Benefits

W Hong Kong Review

The W Hong Kong, by far, provided the most well-rounded experience of any hotel I’ve stayed at. It’s comfortable, friendly, and hip, yet classy. Zero complaints here, and only a ton of praise. Their 5 star rating is well deserved!

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Here is a list of all the things the hotel did right:

1. Beautiful views from our hotel room and lots of natural light. There was even a window in the shower room with a great view of the water!
2. Exceptional service to the nth degree. From hotel manager to concierge to staff to chef, everyone was so helpful and accommodating. The concierge provided tremendously useful information for our daily outings. I never really opt to ask a hotel concierge anything, but I might need to do it more often now.
3. The hotel manager left us a handwritten card on the last day AND custom made a Coke bottle label with Nicholai’s name on it. Wow.
4. The hotel is connected to the Kowloon train station and airport rail station via a gigantic shopping mall called Elements. From the airport to the hotel (30 minutes), we never stepped foot outside.
5. The pool and hot tub were on the roof and had amazing views.
6. Best breakfast food I’ve had at a hotel because they served Chinese dishes alongside the normal Continental breakfast. Breakfast also included a gallery of fresh juices and desserts. This meal usually held us over until dinner because we would stuff ourselves. 🙂
7. Advanced technology!!! I can’t wait until this is normal and I don’t need to be overly excited for it. Buttons activated mostly everything in the room. Charging wires were available by the bedside. Every room has a free cell phone with unlimited data and local calls to use while you’re out exploring for the day.

Cool Corner Room with the view.

View from the shower/tub in the Cool Corner Room.

Coke bottle with Nicholai’s name on the custom made label!

Hot tub on the roof with yet another awesome view!

Ready to learn about how we booked 4 nights at the W Hong Kong? Read on!

Booking 4 nights at the W Hong Kong Using Citi Prestige Benefits

How Much It Costs

I’ll start with the bottom line – for four nights, the total was $1,183.45. We don’t normally spend this much on accommodations, but we decided to splurge for this trip and I think we got a pretty good deal.

Although we started applying for more hotel credit cards recently, we didn’t book the W Hong Kong with points. Starwood wants 25,000 SPG points per night and that’s just for the base level room. As versatile as SPG points are, you really want to be getting at least 2-2.5 cents per point of value when redeeming them. If using them for hotels, 25k SPG points “should” get you a $500+ room. Knowing that our SPG points could get us much better value elsewhere, we paid cash instead and took advantage of a benefit on our Citi Prestige card to get our 4th night free.

As you can guess, the Citi Prestige credit card has a “4th Night Free” perk that will reimburse you for 25% of your stay, minus taxes and fees, provided you stay at a hotel for 4 consecutive nights. In the past, Citi would actually credit you for the exact rate of the fourth night instead of the average nightly cost (as well as taxes and fees for that night). Anyway, that’s done with and now the benefit is calculated on average cost.

The one catch, if you can even call it that, is that you need to book through Citi’s Concierge service. Don’t worry though – any hotel that you can find on the web will most likely be in Citi’s Concierge system. The ones you have to watch out for are the places that brand themselves as “Aparthotels” or similar. These are usually privately owned rooms being rented out through the building’s management and don’t count as being “hotels” in Citi’s book. You can book with Citi’s concierge service over the phone (everyone we’ve dealt with has been very competent) or via e-mail. When we figured out that we wanted to stay at the W Hong Kong, we made the call and the booking took about 10 minutes! Easy as that.

Why It’s a Good Deal

I won’t go into the minutae of all of the research we did, but trust me when I say that the W was the best deal for any of the 5-star hotels in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is home to a range of 5-star hotels that I’d classify as: barely 5-star, solid mid-range (which I’d consider the W to fall in), and mega, with hotels like the Ritz-Carlton, Mandarin Oriental, Peninsula, and Four Seasons whose cheapest rooms were over $400/night. The W’s least expensive room was $303/night after a SPG promotional “Buy 2, get 3” deal. The same deal brought the nightly retail cost for their Cool Corner Room (a 4-tier upgrade from the base room) to $348/night – over $50/night cheaper than the Ritz’s lowest tier room. Our elite status with Starwood makes us eligible for free room upgrades, but the extra cost to guarantee ourselves at least the 4-tier upgrade was worth it.

Speaking of elite status, I’m Starwood Preferred Guest Gold, which I got simply by having my American Express Platinum card – it gives you free Marriott Gold Status, which then matches for free to SPG Gold. Any room I book will give me, among other small perks, a free drink at the bar and a potential free room upgrade. N is Platinum which gives N’s room free daily breakfast for 2, a free drink at the bar, and a potential free upgrade up to a suite!

Unfortunately, as they were pretty full for the days we were there, the best we were able to do was get our room upgraded to a suite (Fantastic Suite) for the last 2 nights. Honestly, I could’ve stayed in the Cool Corner Room because it’s actually really cool. 😀 If I had to pay to jump from the room to the suite, I wouldn’t have done it. But because it was free…why not!?

This experience was definitely one I’ll never forget. Thank you W Hong Kong for such a wonderful stay! xx

— T.

View from the Fantastic Suite