Beijing's Most Exciting New Hotels

Your senses are blurred as you arrive in Beijing, host city of the 2008 Summer Olympics and global focal point for all things China.

Instead of red lacquer gates and horizon of soot-spitting smoke stacks, the Norman Foster-designed terminal seems more like an intergalactic port with its infinite-woven roof and boomerang-like form built to evoke the essence of a dragon.

A single human is dwarfed while walking through the space, even with good luggage, eyeing the grand colonnades draped in Mao-red fabric with Chinese symbols that are nothing more than pretty to an unfamiliar foreign eye.

Getting Around

The Jetsons-inspired airport arrival leaves the senses ill-prepared for the taxi-cab chaos that awaits just outside the terminal as you attempt to communicate with a sweaty driver in a plumb of cigarette smoke via hand gestures and hotel confirmations only to be rebutted with pointed fingers and grunts at a stained map.

Traffic is as confusing as the static-plagued sound of the local radio as intersections are approached at a snail's pace and a million-man foot brigade is unleashed and then retreated by a single six-foot traffic light.

Beijing Bargains

The luxury hotel market has gone from 0 to 60 in about five years, with many of the city's best properties yet to come. Rumors swirled in recent years with whispered openings by Aman Resorts, Four Seasons, Banyan Tree and Mandarin Oriental.

That added to the already-bloated luxury hotel landscape that includes outposts of the Peninsula, Regent Hotel, and two Ritz Carlton properties located along Financial Street, as well as one in the more-central Chaoyang District. Many claim the local market is saturated with too many luxury rooms and not enough occupants.