The Chow Kit, the first hotel from the Ormond group, offers a promising glimpse of what's to come from the brand. A small hotel big on style, its 113 rooms are compact but luxuriously finished, with non-essentials stripped back to keep the rates pleasingly affordable.

From the outside, the six-story Chow Kit has the look of a New York brownstone. Inside, the design hits just the right note between homely and metropolitan, traditional and contemporary, with the double-height lobby/lounge/restaurant combining red brick floors with elegant white lanterns, Malaysian songket fabrics, vintage chairs and a brass bar. Artifacts and art pieces (some from the hotel chairman's own collection) make for interesting viewing; rattan tiffins, ceramic bowls, old Malay movie posters, and framed newspaper pages announcing the end of British reign.