Tai O Heritage Hotel

Built in 1902 as the Tai O Marine Police Station, this small building on a headland above the Tai O fishing village served as a frontier post against piracy for a century before being decommissioned in 2002. It reopened in 2012 as a nine-room heritage hotel, run as a non-profit conservation project by the Hong Kong Heritage Conservation Foundation, with all profits going toward maintaining the Grade II-listed building. The restoration won a UNESCO award for cultural heritage conservation in 2013.

Location

Western Lantau, on a hill above Tai O village and its stilt houses — remote by Hong Kong standards, reached by bus or ferry via Tung Chung, not a quick trip from the city centre.

What it's known for

Original police-station features left visibly intact — cannons, a searchlight, former cells, corner turrets — alongside a glass-roofed restaurant with sea views reportedly stretching as far as Macau on a clear day. Just nine rooms, each named for a different part of the building's history.

Who it suits

Travellers who want something genuinely different from a standard city hotel — a quiet, historic, one-of-a-kind stay in exchange for real distance from Central, best combined with a couple of nights elsewhere rather than a whole trip based here.