After staying at the Hotel LKF, I can't quite figure out what market it is trying to serve. On the one hand, it is expensive and tries to be glamorous, but on the other, it fails on the basic check points of a good hotel, making it a sub-par choice as a business hotel. The hotel reminds me of an uber-chic trendy restaurant that aches to be popular but that everyone knows will be gone in a few years.

First, the good. The hotel is stylish, the bed is sublime, the staff is enthusiastic (more on that later), and the location is the best you can get in Central (right downstairs is the famous Lan Kwai Fong district). Unlike some other reviewers, I had zero noise issues on my 21st floor room). I can imagine there being noise on a lower floor near the weekend festivities, so if you are a picky sleeper, ask for a high floor or look elsewhere.

The provided amenities are very nice (they even provide ear buds/q-tips). They provide a giant flat screen TV and you can even plug your mp3 player into the provided amp and the music will come out of ceiling-mounted speakers (I'm not sure if your neighbors above would appreciate this... I didn't use this feature). Also provided is a DVD player. They even provide a fancy European coffee maker in your room that I never used, in addition to the usual tea kettle for tea. (I think many of these "boutique features" are useless to the average business traveler, and I doubt leisure travelers use all of them either.)

Now, the bad points. First, the bathroom. Although the bathroom looks right out of Architectural Digest magazine, whoever designed it put form before function. It's impossible to shower comfortably. They provide a tub with a hand-held shower only that you can attach to a wall bracket for standard showering. When you attach the shower head to the wall, the water shoots more out at you than down, spraying water all over the place. The tub is adjacent to the building's exterior window, so the water even hits there and runs past the edge of the tub (there's actually a special drain down there for this). There is a standard shower curtain which easily touches you because the tub is not wide.

The lavatory faucet, although beautiful, is also awkward. Instead of having separate hot and cold valves, there is only one valve. The water gets hotter the more you turn it. This provides no volume control, so that if you want warm or hot water, your only choice is to have the water blasting out at incredible speed and splashing all over the counter. This wastes tons of water too. The plumbing issues are all mere annoyances, however, because the maid comes and cleans it all up anyway, right?

Between the toilet and the rest of the bathroom is a piece of floor-to-ceiling plate glass. The glass is not frosted for privacy, so it really serves no purpose other than providing the maids something to clean. Also, it is very easy to walk into it, especially if you try to use the bathroom without turning on the light. If I were the Hotel LKF owner I would rip this glass out and no one would miss it. Or better yet, replace it with an opaque material like bamboo to provide a small sense of privacy when using the toilet.

The bathroom had the typical card asking guests to save the environment by hanging your towels on the provided hooks if you didn't want them changed. I tried this but the maid took the towel off the hook anyway. Perhaps the maid didn't know what the card says?

The room is fully outfitted with buttons that control every light you can imagine. I found this annoying because in the dark you don't know what to push. I just started pushing buttons randomly if it was dark. This is not really the hotel's fault, I admit.

Surprisingly, to complement the futuristic lighting controls was a cheap manual thermostat (not digital) that did a poor job of controlling the room temperature. I was always either freezing or warm. The humidity (ever present in HKG) was poorly controlled too. I think the AC was too strong for the room, so that it would shut off before the humidity had dropped. If you wanted a dry room, you had to really crank down the temp low. The maid tended to do this every time she cleaned, so I would come back to an ice box.

The internet service worked fine but it's overpriced. It's even more expensive than at business-class hotels such as Shangri La and Intercontinental (I've stayed at both).

The breakfast (mine was included with my room) was acceptable but nothing to write home about. It's a small buffet with rolls, cheese, eggs, bacon, etc. Many times I peruse gigantic buffets and only find a few items I actually like. I actually liked most everything at this buffet, but it could use a few extra selections. It would be nice if they offered a few Chinese items, such as steamed vegetables or dim sum. Also, the buffet never changed at all during my stay. It was exactly the same day after day.

The hotel has no gym or fitness center, but provides complimentary access to the gigantic (by HKG standards) California Fitness about one block away. If working out is important to you, you will appreciate this. I used it every day. The only annoying aspect to this is that you have to ask for a pass every day you want to go, upon which the desk staff has to fill out forms for you that you sign. This seems overly complex. Why can't they just provide a pass card with begin and end dates? Make sure you explicitly ask if your rate includes gym access. I asked, and they seemed to put a lot of thought into it before answering yes.

I sent laundry out to be done. My jeans came back significantly lighter than they were when I sent them out. I confirmed with the desk staff that they send the laundry outside the hotel, and when I described my jeans they awkwardly replied they would "look into it."

The staff of the Hotel LKF was a paradox. They were certainly friendly and cheerful (my floor's maid delivered a smiling "good morning" to me very time I saw her, no matter if it was 8 am or 5 pm.) Some of the desk staff seemed excited to be there, as if it was their first job, while others seemed detached and bored. What they lack is what established 5-star hotels like Shangri La, Intercontinental, and Four-Seasons have, which is a blend of confidence and accuracy, service and professionalism. This basically comes down to training, and that is what you get with the big established hotels. Service is their life-blood, and they know how to deliver it well in their large important properties.

I might stay at the Hotel LKF again, but then again I might not. If I were on vacation at my own cost, I would look at the Lan Kwai Fong Hotel (which isn't actually in Lan Kwai Fong, strangely). The rooms there are smaller, and the chic-level is lower, but it's much cheaper and the typical non-business traveler would be just as well-served. I stayed there once before and found it fine for the lower price and equally good location. For a business trip, you can stay at one of the great established hotels in Kowloon for the same price. But that is Hotel LKF's trump card... it's location. For the price, it offers a pretty nice stay right in Central.