Location One of three Mandarin Oriental hotels in the city, this is the flagship – appropriately overlooking Victoria Harbour – a 25km, 40-minute, HK$300 (€30) cab ride from the airport, and close to the central rail station. Trains to and from the airport take 25 minutes and cost €8. The hotel is a few minutes’ walk to the Hong Kong Convention Centre and is linked by walkway to The Landmark mall, whose tenants include Harvey Nichols. Outside, cabs are amusingly cheap and plentiful.

Style This iconic hotel was refurbished five years ago but most of the public areas still have a 1960s feel, which simultaneously seems old-fashioned and super-trendy. The lounges and white-marbled lobby hum with dark suits and elegant greeters and it is impossible to order a drink in the red leathered Captain’s Bar, or dinner in the one-Michelin-star Mandarin Grill without feeling you’re in Mad Men. On the 25th floor, you get awesome views (and one Michelin star again) from the contemporary Pierre restaurant. Should you overdo the corporate hospitality in these, or any other of the hotel’s restaurants and bars, recovery is assured in the 2,000m2 Mandarin Spa, a labyrinth of solid black marble and dark wood, topped, literally, by a swimming pool. The Mandarin Salon dispenses beauty treatments; the traditional Mandarin Barber is an Esquire reader’s fantasy.

Guestrooms There are 501 rooms and suites, with even the smallest “study” rooms racking up 32m2. All rooms are sleek, walnut-panelled and well-appointed with neutral furnishings, comfortable beds and bedding. Hi-tech gadgets include iPod docks and 37in flat TV screens. Many rooms have 15in TV screens in the bathrooms, which are luxuriously solid, masculine and well-appointed. Toiletries are by Salvatore Ferragamo.

Can I work here? As long as you’re not distracted by all the eating opportunities, you can. Guestrooms are well kitted out for work – desks well-sized, lighting well-positioned and plugs and cables discreet. Unlike many hotels that stick a PC and a seat in a cupboard, this hotel has a proper, staffed, comfortable business centre. Idiotically, though, they charge for internet access, as they do in the rooms. There is a Rubik’s Cube of configurable meeting rooms and corporate entertaining facilities.