Hotel Icon, Hong Kong: A luxury, high-tech and art-loving hotel

I know I'm in a hotel that's thought of everything when I find a jogging route printed on a postcard in my hotel room. "Jogging Route from Hotel Icon" it says, outlining a path which will take me from my hotel suite to a wide track alongside Victoria Harbour, past the Avenue of Stars (hello statue of Jackie Chan) to the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, where I'll turn around and head back. But first, let me gobble up the teeny packs of M&Ms in the bar fridge.

Hotel Icon is an anomaly, in a very, very good way. Set up as part hospitality management training centre (the university component is subterranean), part technology and art-loving luxury hotel, it manages to offer guests something quite different, while pumping profits back into the Polytechnic.

It's a hotel where everything seems so well thought out. A mobile phone, for instance, comes with my room. "The Handy" has 3G internet, makes free local and international calls and has GPS so I know that the taxi driver is taking me in the right direction when I eventually leave my haven.

As well as clever, it's arty, linking with the Polytechnic University again by loading the foyer walls with pieces taken at photo shoots of fashion students' work. Fashion designer Barney Cheng designed the staff uniforms prior to the hotel opening four years ago, and now, after seeing the staff at work, he's updating their wardrobes, which will see Hotel Icon's yellow symbol – on everything from the sweatband to the Handy's cover – reinterpreted once again.

Apart from M&Ms in the minibar (like the phone and the calls, the minibar's free), Hotel Icon has created dining experiences that are so popular it can take three months to get a booking. The Market, a buffet featuring zillions of flavours from around the world made by chefs who have been plucked out of retirement or from other establishments, is exceptional dining. It has won the Best Buffet award three years in a row on OpenRice (Hong Kong Urbanspoon equivalent), and has just begun opening for afternoon tea on weekends. So here's to much, much, more green tea chocolate cake. Now, where are my runners?

The author was a guest of Hotel Icon.

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