Hotel design for millennials: in Hong Kong, common areas reimagined for locals and visitors alike

Hotels such as St. Regis and Eaton HK are rethinking the concept of common areas, with a nod to Hong Kong’s past and a firm eye on the future

Specialist coffee shops, co-working spaces, artist studios and galleries have replaced typical glossy lobby areas

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The co-working space at Eaton HK hotel in Jordan, one of a number of Hong Kong hotels rethinking their common areas.

Published: 6:15pm, 24 Jun 2019Updated: 9:15pm, 25 Jun 2019

When Katherine Lo Bo-lun took over the 29-year-old Eaton Hotel from her hotelier father, her goal was to turn the property into something unlike any other hotel in Hong Kong.

“I wanted to reimagine the hotel as a place of art and social change,” she says of the property in Jordan, a busy neighbourhood on Kowloon Peninsula.

The revamped property, unveiled in November 2018 and rebranded Eaton HK, maintains vestiges of its past as a business hotel. The 465 rooms are small – about 17 square metres, except for a couple of suites – and the exterior has the same red bricks and blue glass as when it was built in 1990.

Step inside the three-storey atrium, though, and it quickly becomes apparent just how significant the changes have been. Gone is the marble and gloss, replaced by an interior that is cinematic in its lively colours and moody lighting. There is now an internet radio station, screening room, music venue and art gallery, along with a co-working space that hosts public events such as LGBT ’zine fairs.

Katherine Lo Bo-lun at Eaton HK in Jordan. Photo: Tory Ho

A stylish bar sprawls over the fourth-floor terrace. In the basement, a food hall seems even more popular with locals than with hotel guests; it opens onto a previously neglected sunken plaza that sits below the junction of Nathan and Gascoigne roads.

“It’s really taken on a life of its own,” says Lo.