A Space Odyssey

Business travelers want more than a desk and a cup of coffee. And hotels are answering with room for the coworking boom.

- Dan Booth & Akanksha Maker

Rising above the venerable Hung Hom ferry pier on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbor, the vast Kerry Hotel is a luxury property which offers that most sought-after of luxuries in crowded Hong Kong – space. Billing itself as “an urban lifestyle resort,” the new hotel emphasizes its generous size in every aspect of its design, from the sweeping vistas of the curvilinear glass-and-marble lobby to its park-like outdoor areas.

But Hong Kong is a city that’s all about business, and the Kerry has not forsaken this fundamental tenet of life in the Special Administrative Region. In addition to a set of expansive traditional ballrooms and other facilities for meetings and events, the hotel is home to the latest value add in hospitality, coworking space.

Located on the second floor of the Kerry, the 7,000-square-foot Kafnu Hong Kong is high-design shared work spaces, meeting rooms, common kitchen areas and private sleep pods. It even sports a craft whisky bar. The coworking enclave is the brainchild of Next Story Group, a Singapore-based company that designs, manages and markets hotels and blended lifestyle space.

"The new generations in Asia live in shades of gray: working, playing, living, learning and resting all blend together in their worlds,” explains Morris Sim, chief marketing officer of Next Story Group. “Kafnu is a concept designed precisely for their lifestyles. They have different needs, so we built a different space just for them."

In fact the workspace needs of this new blended style of working and living have given rise to a whole new concept of what it means to be at the office. Instead of cubicle farms bathed in bleak fluorescent light, coworking spaces are creative, cool and often quirky; the Kafnu at the Kerry Hong Kong offers 24 big tables shared by clients, plus meeting rooms and, perhaps most important, communal lounges.