WHAT’S IT LIKE? Very Grand Hyatt, with a glass and steel exterior and a lobby of swooping staircases, lots of marble and live music playing in the afternoons and evenings from the mezzanine-level Tiffin tea lounge. Built in 1989, the hotel has been through many refurbishments, most recently in 1999, with the top suites renovated in 2001. A new spa and gym level added in 2004 was designed by John Morford, also responsible for the famous Park Hyatt Tokyo, setting for the Bill Murray film Lost In Translation. On arrival, I found I had mislaid my booking reference, and after switching on my laptop at reception to retrieve it from an old email discovered that I’d booked the right dates, but for the previous month. Disaster was averted by some very helpful staff, who within a few minutes found a free room, despite it being the commencement of the Hong Kong film festival. This set the tone: during a four-night stay, the service was top class, so good, that for once individuals deserve identifying in their particular role. So thank you to Kelvin, the duty manager, for finding that spare room.

WHERE IS IT? A seven-minute walk from Wan Chai MTR station and next to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

HOW MANY ROOMS? 549, subdivided into 24 different room types on the Hyatt website.

ROOM FACILITIES The basic room is the Grand King (38 sqm) with floor-to-ceiling windows and wood panelling. The rooms are spotless but slightly dated in design, particularly the bathrooms of black and white marble with gold taps. They provide a good working environment, though, with a self-contained workstation and wireless high-speed internet. The bathrooms have a separate tub and shower, robes and slippers, and the king bed with duvet and feather pillows was extremely comfortable. There is an automatic water boiler for making tea, and a thankfully easy-to-use lighting system. Some 70 per cent of rooms have harbour views – very useful for block bookings so no one feels snubbed – although presently there is work going on through the night at the Convention and Exhibition Centre, so if you are a light sleeper ask for a room on a higher level, or one of the 30 per cent facing the 11,000 sqm landscaped garden, shared with neighbouring blocks.

The Grand Club provides five floors of executive accommodation and three floors of speciality suites, making a total of 84 Grand Club Rooms and 18 suites. The Club Lounge is a split-level facility on the 30th and 31st floors, with views over the harbour and across to Kowloon, where breakfast and early evening drinks are served. It is a comfortable area to sit and work when you want to get out of the room and away from the more public areas of the hotel, and for long stayers the welcome here is warm and personal. I was impressed they remembered my breakfast preferences after only the first morning: Scott, thank you. You can also access the lounge from a Grand room, for a charge of HK$800 (£51) per 24 hours.

RESTAURANTS AND BARS There are several choices: traditional Cantonese (One Harbour Road), Japanese (Kaetsu) with 50 varieties of sake on the menu, and Kaiseki cuisine, and Italian (Grissini). This last on the second floor is one of Hong Kong’s best Italian restaurants under chef de cuisine Marco Torre: innovative, delicious food is served in a stylish space with chairs by Philippe Starck and a view overlooking the west garden. Sample menu: a starter of slow-cooked Italian pigeon breast with honey and hazelnuts, blackberry vinaigrette and baked ricotta salad; a primo plate of Bucatini pasta with pork cheek, yellow onion, tomatoes and matured ewe’s milk cheese (HK$230/£15); and a main course of Ligurian fish stew with croutons (HK$350/£22.80).

There’s a large Italian wine list, with a reasonable choice of half bottles and wines by the glass for solo business travellers, although if you eat on your own, ask for a table with enough light to read by, as it’s dimly lit.

Other choices include The Grill poolside on the 11th floor, Tiffin for Tea and the Grand Café for all-day dining. On the ground floor to the right of reception, the Champagne Bar has Moet & Chandon for HK$160 (£10.40) a glass (HK$830/£54 a bottle), or for those wanting a splash out, Dom Perignon 1959 for HK$15,000 (£978). Entertainment carries on into the early hours with a pianist and singer in a ballgown.

Evening entertainment is also available at JJ’s Thai, which is spread over two floors and accessed from a separate entrance. Renovated in 2006, it has live music in the upper-level Music Room from admirable in-house band Drop Zone (who play Latin, jazz and swing every night apart from Sunday), and Thai cuisine (JJ’s Thai) on the lower level for lunch and evening under chef Sirilcuk from the Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok.

LEISURE FACILITIES On the 11th floor is the spa (Plateau), fitness facilities and both indoor and outdoor pools, as well as the outdoor poolside restaurant The Grill for lunch and dinner, and The Courtyard for light refreshments. The design element here is strong, and more modern than in the other public areas of the hotel – the pool area looking like something out of a photo shoot with stark lines of grey slate. The Pool House, overlooking this area, is also available for private functions.

The gym is quite small, although it’s difficult to tell at first because of spot lighting and large floor-to-ceiling mirrors which, first thing in the morning, can be a little disorienting. It is well equipped and the gym attendant was very helpful, explaining how to use some of the more unfamiliar machines – Simon, thank you. The spa is a total of 7,400 sqm, with residential accommodation in 14 of the 23 rooms and suites. These are more minimalist than the rest of the hotel, with king-sized futons, huge bath and rain shower, Aesop toiletries, pine floors and an iPod sound system. The Plateau uses Carita products and all treatment rooms have individual private changing rooms. The 50-metre heated outdoor swimming pool is open year round; and in addition, a 400-metre jogging track, a golf driving range, two floodlit tennis courts and two squash courts are shared with adjacent buildings.

BUSINESS AND MEETING FACILITIES The business centre on the ground floor has two meeting rooms, three computer stations and an attractive corridor lined with dictionaries in more than 20 languages, including the complete Oxford English, which offers plenty of reading material while you wait for your fax to go through. The hotel also has video-conferencing facilities, computer workrooms, conference calling, a reference library, private meeting rooms, interpreters, and information on local commerce, industry, banking and finance. On the first floor there’s also The Residence, a new suite of three function rooms connected by a kitchen area, which doubles as break-out space. The hotel is particularly strong on meetings, with a total of 25 meeting rooms including Hyatt’s Grand Ballroom, able to accommodate 950 theatre-style. The Grand Hyatt was the first five-star hotel in Hong Kong to offer a fast ethernet LAN and wireless connectivity between all meeting rooms, which are connected to the internet using a dedicated 10Mbps line, both upstream and downstream.

VERDICT Excellent service throughout, and well thought out rooms with all the facilities a business traveller could need, along with a good business centre and a useful executive floor lounge for those looking to use the hotel as an office abroad. The extensive function rooms make it a great venue for meetings, and of course the location next to the conference centre makes it a popular choice. Highly recommended.

PRICES Fully flexible internet rates for a midweek stay in mid May started at HK$3,842 (£249), room only.

CONTACT Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, 1 Harbour Road, Hong Kong, tel +852 2588 1234, hongkong.grand.hyatt.com.