Kwok Family’s Empire Group bets on Hong Kong’s border reopening to spur tourism demand for its HK$6 billion five-star hotel Kimpton

Name: Hong Kong-mainland border reopening hopes grow as Chinese experts review city’s Covid-19 measures
Uploaded: 2021-11-23T03:33:02.000Z
Duration: 1 min
Description: Hong Kong-mainland border reopening hopes grow as Chinese experts review city’s Covid-19 measures

Construction of The Kimpton, a HK$6 billion five-star hotel project, has reached 10th storey of the 42-storey structure

Family-owned Empire Group has also joined partners in building the Greenwich Village mall in Tseung Kwan O South and the Fullerton Ocean Park hotel

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The Kimpton, under construction in Tsim Sha Tsui, is scheduled to open in the second half of 2023.

Lam Ka-sing

Published: 11:33am, 23 Nov 2021Updated: 12:14pm, 23 Nov 2021

Empire Group Holdings, founded by the late Hong Kong tycoon Walter Kwok Ping-sheung, is pushing on with its HK$6 billion (US$770 million) luxury hotel project in Tsim Sha Tsui, betting that tourism in the city will rebound from one of its worst patches on record.

The Kimpton, a 42-storey five-star hotel built on the former Mariners’s Club, will offer 492 rooms with harbour views at its opening in the second half of 2023. Construction has reached the 10th floor, fully making up for delays over the past two years by the city’s social unrest and material supply bottlenecks during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The plan will allow the family-owned developer to benefit from an expected recovery in the industry amid tentative signs of border reopening and room demand.

The local pandemic situation “is gradually settling,” said director Jonathan Kwok, a son of Walter Kwok. “Hopefully by the end of 2022, I think the border should be [fully] reopened.”

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Hong Kong-mainland border reopening hopes grow as Chinese experts review city’s Covid-19 measures

While the city has maintained its strict quarantine requirements for inbound visitors, local residents would be allowed to enter mainland China without quarantine starting from early December, the South China Morning Post reported last week.