👎 Pool hasn't enough capacity for higher occupancies.
We continue our staycay shenanigans* with a short taxi ride from the Marriott Tang Plaza to the St Regis Singapore! We've visited the St Regis in the past as dining guests (Yan Ting / La Brezza / Brasserie Les Saveurs), so we're really excited to finally get a chance to visit as hotel guests.
It was really nice to get a call at around 11 in the morning informing me that our upgraded (Deluxe to Grand Deluxe) room was ready, so we headed over and joined the (very short, quick-clearing) check-in queue. Checking in while seated at desks somehow feels more atas than standing at a counter, doesn't it?
* Hotels in the Staycay tour:
Raffles Hotel | Capella Singapore | Marriott Tang Plaza | The St.Regis Singapore | Grand Hyatt | The Fullerton Bay Hotel | Parkroyal Collection, Marina Bay | Marina Bay Sands.
Having collected our keys, we head up to the room, where the door opens up to a corridor with the bathroom on the left, minibar island on the right, and living / sleeping area up ahead.
The room decor is gorgeous, and oh-so-classy. The St Regis Singapore opened more than a decade ago, but the decor still feels fresh and relevant today. There's also plenty of space beside, and in front of, the bed for the little one* to run around and not get himself into too much trouble.
* Having said that, we ended up needing to relocate the floor-standing coat rack, and block access to the floor-standing lamp behind the single-seater chair, to discourage him from demonstrating his ability to pull them over onto himself.
On the opposite side of the room there's a somewhat strangely-located sofa (can't quite watch TV while sitting on it), and the desk area for one person to get some work done.
The closets are wide and deep enough to store a medium-large sized suitcase, and house the 'standard' amenities (bathrobe, umbrella, slippers). For slippers ... we're always unexplainably excited when hotels supply small children sized slippers. Our toddler isn't quite old enough to wear them properly, but still!
The room's lights, curtains, and drapes are operated by (identical) bedside control panels. One minor annoyance is that you're given a choice of scenes (e.g. reading, cosy, movie, night) that control the overall brightness of the room. It does work well, though I prefer to have more granular control over individual lights. The control panel can be stowed away into the bedside tables if you get too annoyed with the toddler constantly closing and opening the drapes.
While the overall room decor hasn't aged much, the electronics are starting to show their age - example being these composite (red white yellow) and S-Video inputs. The Bose surround system is also not bluetooth or phone/iPod compatible: It can only be used to watch TV.
The minibar island at the entrance houses the fridge, cutlery, and tea and coffee making facilities.
The hotel also provides a small sanitary kit to help ward off covid. Sadly their masks aren't hotel-branded like the ones over at Raffles Hotel.
The bathroom is also gorgeous, and we're happy to note a (free-standing) bathtub.
Of course there's also a shower (not quite big enough for two people in our opinion). It's not quite a rainshower, but it does have a fancy horizontal-shooting water jet built in, which we really liked. Adult bath/shower amenities are by Remède - which seems to be the 'brand' of skincare / spa of St. Regis worldwide - and toddler amenities from Kodomo (which literally means 'child' in Japanese).
Ah, before I forget, all guests at St Regis Singapore can access the wet lounge facilities at the Remède spa even if you aren't doing (read: paying for) any spa treatments. Unfortunately the wife and I didn't visit as we couldn't figure out what to do with the little one.
Evening turndown service is pretty par for the course, I guess: A quick tidying of the sheets, placing of slippers, and a tray with the TV remote and breakfast menu cards. No sweet treat, though.
The St Regis Singapore has a butler service, which you can theoretically use to do all sorts of things like unpack your luggage or buy a pack of cigars from Tanglin Mall. The wife and I always too paiseh to ask for anything, though: The only thing we asked for was freshly-brewed St Regis blend coffee in the morning.
The Grand Deluxe rooms face away from Orchard Road, and towards the general direction of the Singapore Botanical Gardens.
In-room dining was - in our opinions - fairly reasonably priced (relatively), and baby/high chairs are available upon request. If your toddler's at that noisy / throw-food-on-floor stage, it can be a far less stressful experience having meals in privacy (though you do still need to worry about how to get food out of the carpet). The items we ordered were pretty good for in-room-dining standards.
As Mariott Bonvoy Platinum Elites, we are supposed to have club lounge access, but the St Regis Singapore doesn't have one. Instead, afternoon drinks and bites (1 of each per day) is served at the gorgeous St Astor Bar.
One of the main hiccups we had during the stay (and to be clear, this is no fault of the hotel) was not being able to secure a pool booking slot for the first two days due to covid capacity restrictions. We cheered ourselves up by having sparkling juice (Barons de Rothschild champagne if you're not teetotalers like us) with cake while soaking in the tub. And if you were wondering, yes, the tub is big enough for 2 adults and a toddler.
We did manage to get a pool slot on our third day, though! The pool itself isn't the biggest, but it's long enough to put some casual laps in. Our toddler was far more interested in the mini water fountains in the wading area off to the side, though, and pretty much spent the entire 2 hours playing with them.
Breakfast is served at the hotel's French restaurant (Brasserie Les Saveurs), and is a semi-unlimited ala carte concept (main dishes are 1 per person, side dishes unlimited). The wait staff don't really seem strict on enforcing this limit though, cos for both breakfasts we ordered 3 mains (for 2 people).
Breakfast items were a bit of a mixed bag. We thought that the Thai items (spring rolls and pork skewers with sticky rice) and the lobster foam omelette were pretty good, but others like the porridge and laksa were particularly disappointing.
All in all, for the money we paid (s$600 nett for 2 nights, including breakfast and $50 dining credit), we thought the St Regis was really terrific value. There were two hiccups - first one being the pool booking problem (not a fault of the hotel), second one being that they forgot my birthday arrangement request, but other than that we had a very enjoyable stay, and would certainly come back in the future.
