China’s Top Ten Hotels
By Joe Yogerst
The Forbes Traveler 400 experts pick the top hotels China’s 10 best hotels
Much like the Chinese team and their medal haul at the recent Beijing Olympics, the country’s hotel scene has also gone from strength to strength in recent years, emerging from the self-imposed dark age of hospitality that marked the hardcore communist era into a dynamic new world of incredible places to sleep.
Hong Kong has always been a bastion of great hotels. The former British colony is home to half of China’s 10 best hotels, as determined by the Forbes Traveler 400 board of experts, who rated nearly 800 of the world’s top hotels for their rooms, service, decor, cuisine, public areas, recreational options and location. Until very recently, mainland China lagged behind Hong Kong-20 years ago, there wasn’t a hotel anywhere in the “middle kingdom” that would have made any sort of best list.
But how quickly things can change. Fueled by China’s unprecedented economic growth over the past two decades, and the emergence of what may become the world’s largest middle class, the country’s hotel industry has taken off like a rocket. Add to this the urgency of developing new hotels for the 2008 Summer Games and the upcoming 2010 Shanghai World Expo-
