Hongkongers, tourists tell the Excelsior: thanks for the memories

Paul Wong has had a lifelong love affair with the Excelsior, the four-star hotel overlooking Victoria Harbour that will soon be torn down to make way for more offices.

He took a date to one of its restaurants. That date would become his wife. The couple continued to go to the hotel for celebrations. Eventually, they took their son there. The hotel’s story is stitched into his own life story as well.

“We remember the revolving doors, the food, the atmosphere,” said Hongkonger Wong. “It means a lot to me because we were very happy then.”

Wong’s nostalgia was being felt by many other Hongkongers on Tuesday after the announcement that the storied hotel in Causeway Bay will serve its last meals and host its last room guests this coming March.

The hotel sits on “Lot No 1,” the first plot of land sold after Hong Kong became a British colony in 1841. At first, it was a warehouse of the British conglomerate Jardine Matheson. It opened as the city’s largest hotel in 1973 – when Wong was a teenager. And its many moments of fame included being a setting in the 1978 American hit comedy Revenge of the Pink Panther.