A full overview of what you can expect completing a full 14 night hotel quarantine, based on our experience in August 2021.
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It’s no secret, Hong Kong has maintained one of the strictest policies regarding rules & procedures to enter the country across the world. As a result, entering these days can be quite a hassle.
As the situation regarding requirements, quarantine length and required documents is constantly changing, your best bet to understand the exact quarantine requirements that will apply to you at your time of travel is to stay up to date on the government’s comprehensive guides.
This is the link to the relevant website which we recommend you do extensive research on as well as reading/asking questions in the HK quarantine support group on FB, which was tremendously helpful in our experience.
At the time of our arrival to Hong Kong (August 2021) we were subject to 14 nights quarantine in a government approved hotel. After doing research of the 33 hotels on the list at the time and reading many horror stories about people’s experience's quarantining, we chose the Four Points by Sheraton Tung Chung for our Hong Kong quarantine hotel experience.
This post will give you a better understanding of what you can expect when completing the Hong Kong quarantine experience at the Four Points by Sheraton Tung Chung.
If you're wondering what to pack or bring this post on the 11 things that will help you get through the experience will help.
Getting to the Four Points & location
Upon our landing in HK early in the morning, the process of de-boarding, going through airport arrival procedures for us at the time (all checks, documentation and PCR testing) took around 2-3 hours.
After you complete all procedures, you can proceed to collect your luggage and find your shuttle bus to the hotel. Free shuttle buses were provided and took us & our luggage to the quarantine hotel free of charge.
The Four Points is located on Lantau Island, which geographically means you’re very close to the airport. In fact, it was the first stop of our shuttle bus and took around 15 minutes drive from the airport.
Having said that, being on Lantau means you do have a more limited access to Hong Kong’s restaurants & delivery services. Overall though, unless you’re planning to order daily takeaway, which you should not need to do with this hotel’s food quality, we found the surrounding selection just fine.
A few general principles of the Hong Kong quarantine hotel experience
When you arrive at the hotel you will firstly need to proceed to the check-in, pay for your room if you haven’t yet and receive your room key.
Since you are strictly prohibited from leaving your room at all time during your quarantine period, the key that is issued to you is a one-time key. So keep in mind that once you use it to open the door once, it will no longer work after that. This can be especially important when getting all your luggage into the room - don’t let the door close until you’re done!
Same goes for check out time - on the last day of your quarantine, you can not leave the room as you please, but must wait for a staff member to come pick you up & escort you out. We recommend calling reception the day before & they happily reserve a time for you to check out.
As you are not allowed to leave your room - no one is allowed to enter. This means no housekeeping for your entire quarantine period.
"No contact" deliveries from the outside world
You will receive your meals delivered 3 times daily, but the hotel also allows for outside deliveries, so if you want to order out, have a friend/loved one deliver something or shop online, note down your room number when ordering and the courier will leave your delivery at reception & hotel will deliver to your room.
If you have friends/family in HK, it’s also worth mentioning that the hotel has a shuttle bus from HK Island that goes to & from the FP in Tung Chung. Times and frequency are best to be found out by calling the hotel directly.
Each room has a chair, on which all your deliveries (whether you’re receiving something from the hotel, your takeaway, or another delivery, “unsoiled” items are placed on this chair and the doorbell is rung. Here's a list of the items you should consider bringing along for your stay.
The room itself & amenities provided by the hotel
We chose the standard room (most affordable option) at the FP. The room included a great sized bathroom with walk-in shower (loooooved it) and very small kitchen area with kettle & basic instant coffee, sugar and teas which you can request more of throughout your stay if you wish.
The ‘living’ area consisted of large bed and small sitting area near the window, which also becomes your dining table. It’s a sufficient sized room, but I believe the fact that the building is almost brand new makes up for the lack of space.
If you will be working on the computer during your quarantine, you can request a small desk & chair for your room. This is free of charge, but the supply is limited, so I recommend requesting this ahead of your stay.
Additionally, the standard rooms face mostly the construction site across the street, but you might get lucky like us and get to also see the water from the side, so its not so bad. If view is very important to you, you can pay extra and try to get a full sea view room.
So you are in this one room for a long period of time. But how do I do wash my clothes? Do the dishes? Do I need to bring shampoo?
First off - as you would expect under normal staying at a hotel circumstances, the hotel provides you with basic personal amenities such as shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hand soap, toothbrush, etc. The amounts that were in the standard room were sufficient for 2 of us staying 14 nights, but if somehow you were to run out, just call the reception service and they’ll bring you more.
For your kitchen, cleaning & waste needs, the hotel also provides a standard 1 mug/glass/set of cutlery/plate per staying guest as well as a sponge and bottle of dishwashing liquid for doing dishes in the bathroom sink. You’ll also use the same bathroom sink for hand washing your clothes with the laundry detergent (also provided by hotel). For garbage, big and small black rubbish bags are provided and can be sealed & placed outside your room for pickup twice a day.
In the case of the FP, there was also a great yoga mat & so-so resistance band provided for exercise. Our post on what to pack for quarantine also goes through other options for exercise.
Extra’s available from the hotel
The hotel also has a relatively good additional services. Some of the most relevant - food from their restaurant (although we did not try this), a Nespresso machine (180HKD for the entire stay, which includes 2 boxes of capsules. Then 60 HKD per box afterwards), exercise equipment rental such as a walking pad or bike, game console rental, etc. The menu to order such services can be found in your hotel room and ordered by calling the reception.
Let’s talk food
Since serving your mandatory hotel quarantine means you can’t leave your room, all room packages come with full-board meals, where you get all your food cooked & delivered to your room, 3 times a day.
The @fourpointshongkongtungchung lets you choose the meals you want daily from 4 set menus. Chinese / Chinese Vegetarian / Western / Western Vegetarian. You need to choose all your meals before you check-in, but this allows you to mix & match from the various menus and have a Chinese breakfast, western lunch and western veg dinner for example.
Overall, we’ve enjoyed I would say 85% of the food, which is great considering all the horror stories we’d read about quarantine hotel meals all over the city. 🤐 For someone who enjoys a balanced diet these days, enjoying meat when good but also choosing veggie & vegan options often I can say that all menus are equally as good and the recommendation would be to read the descriptions before your stay and choose daily what you’d most likely enjoy. 🥒
In addition to these meals, the hotel provided water, coffee & tea as well as:
🍏 Fresh fruit cups and whole apples/oranges each morning - perfect for snacking or squeezing orange juice
🥯Fresh bread rolls & butter with each lunch
🍪Cookies every dinner time (and sometimes a piece of cake or two)
🥜Surprise happy hour snacks on the weekend!
Check out our HK Quarantine highlight on Instagram for more photos/videos of the food during our stay.
Collecting points for your stay
Something to keep in mind when choosing this hotel, is that it is part of the Marriot Bonvoy program. If you are not a member, we highly recommend signing up to it, which you can do totally free & start to collect points for your stays at over 7000 hotels across the world.
If you are a member, the quarantine period nights will go nicely towards achieving your next membership status goal, so make sure you enter your membership number when booking, give it to staff when you check in, or even claim back the nights after your checkout.
Tips for required Covid testing during the stay
This is not run by the hotel, but might also be helpful to put in this post, so we will mention it. You will most likely have to do PCR tests during your stay (again, please check government regulations for relevant guidelines).
In our case, we did 3 tests during the stay. I saliva sample which is picked up from outside the room, and 2 PCR tests that were conducted by officials who come to the door. In such case, have your passport, a chair and a trash bag handy and just follow the instructions they give you.
Booking your Hong Kong quarantine hotel & making changes
In terms of booking, the flexibility and amount of rooms the FP has to offer made our whole quarantine booking process much less stressful.
You can edit/cancel your reservation up to 7 days until your scheduled arrival and in the case something goes wrong beyond that (flight delays, changes, etc.) the hotel was nice enough to accommodate our changes as well. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can edit your booking 10 times, but generally the staff was exceptionally helpful when we needed to edit.
If the Four Points by Sheraton, Hong Kong, Tung Chung is the hotel you decide to choose - you can reserve your stay on their website directly, via email or even on the phone. You can view the hotel's availability through the built in calendar, and from our experience, due to their relatively flexible policy, the calendar can be a great source of information in case rooms open up. Its worth coming back and refreshing every few days if you're on the look-out for a room.
To summarise, we were very happy with our quarantine hotel of choice and would recommend this hotel if you have to go through the Hong Kong quarantine hotel experience. The new building, provided amenities, food quality and service made our 14 night Hong Kong quarantine experience not just bare-able, but dare I say enjoyable…?
We took the time to savour the fact that we were stuck in a room and not able to “do anything” after the chaos of moving our lives across the world. And I feel if you prepare yourself, it will be ok!
If you have any additional questions about our experience at the FP feel free to send us a direct message on our instagram, we're happy to help!
Furthermore, there are a great deal of answers and experiences in the relevant FB groups.
