The Case of the Hotel Room Door with No Doorknob
WIth a hotel like the East, one of the newer additions to the Hong Kong hotel scene, you've just got to set yourself apart. Thus, they've adopted the tagline "A business hotel with a life." While it's true that the East, where we stayed for two nights, is ideal for the business traveler so long as they don't mind being 20 minutes from Central (but easily reachable on the subway), the hotel is also one we'd hugely recommend to those who appreciate modern technology and good design, because this hotel is bringing it in spades. Not to mention that it's a sister hotel of our recent crush, The Upper House.
For another thing, there's the doors to each guestroom. Where's the doorknob? There is none. Instead, your room key card is embedded with a chip that unlocks your door after touching it to the orange pad, just above the doorbell and below your room number. Then slightly apply pressure to the circle that sits where the doorknob would be, and you're in.
We confess that every time we closed the door behind us to leave, we instinctively reached back to pull on a handle that wasn't there. It's habit. And then we got to wondering...do we really need doorknobs? If you've got the technology like this, then why not use it? With each use, this door became cooler and cooler to us; if only it automatically slid back instead of swung open. Ah well, this was just the first of many surprises at East. We'll take you inside—behind the doorknob-less door—tomorrow.
[Photo: HotelChatter]
Disclosure: We stayed at the East as a guest of Cathay Pacific, while on another, non-hotels-related assignment.
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