Conrad Singapore = Premium Hotel for the Price of Midscale Hotel

100   Recommended
Executive King
January 24, 2020 by

 Map | 6 Reviews | 83% Recommended
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Conrad Centennial Singapore
 Map | 6 Reviews | 83% Recommended

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Executive King

Liked:
Location
Service
Food
Amenities
Room
Stats
Room
Executive King

We stayed at Conrad Singapore a few years ago and eventually moved our stays to Fairmont when rooms at Conrad were starting to age and when Fairmont had generous Platinum suite upgrades.  However the situation has changed: there are no longer Fairmont suite upgrade certificates now that Fairmont is under Accor, the hotel has become stingy regarding upgrades even with guests with a lot more stays than us, no lounge access, no breakfast, and now it’s Fairmont which is starting to show its age.  Meanwhile rooms at Conrad were renovated a couple of years ago.  Despite this I was in the mood for trying something new for example Andaz Singapore but when looking at prices especially with third night free with Amex FHR I realized that Conrad was nearly unbeatable so I booked there and did not regret it.  

 

Location

The location of Conrad is marginally inferior to Fairmont which has direct access to the Raffles City shopping mall and is on a couple of MRT lines which I find to be more useful than Conrad.  However Conrad is only a couple of blocks away so not a big difference, and there are lots of restaurants around Conrad plus a shopping mall right across the street.  If you know your way around, you can easily take the MRT from the airport to Promenade station and walk a few minutes to Conrad hotel; it only requires one extra transfer relative to Fairmont.  In addition, Conrad is not a lot farther from the city center than Fairmont is so the difference is negligible.

 

Room

The low likelihood of receiving suite upgrades at Conrad Singapore has been well documented already so I did not expect a suite, especially not during Chinese New Year holiday.  We got an upgrade to an executive room on a high floor with a nice view of the city which was as good as we could possibly expect.  

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If a suite had been important for this particular trip, I noted that booking a suite outright at Conrad would not have been a lot more expensive than booking the standard room at Andaz and have to hope for a suite upgrade.  Because of high occupancy, Andaz ended up not having suites available for our dates anyway, so my conclusion was that for both entry level rooms and for suites, Conrad was the best value option.  

In our room upon arrival we had a nice welcome gift with the traditional Conrad teddy bear and also a box with several snacks which I believe are the Amex FHR amenity.

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I found the result of the renovations at Conrad to be very good.  The furniture is fairly nice with marble tops on the furniture near the bed and below the TV, and the carpet in the room seems to have been refreshed.  The bathroom has a stand-alone shower in the corner and a separate bathtub along with a dual vanity.  Privacy sheers and curtains are operated from the panel by the bedside, although I would note that they left a non-negligible gap between the sofa and the windows specifically because of the bulky curtains which are on the entire length of the room, and the sofa is equally long; it might not have been the most efficient use of space.

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Dining

Several people reported waiting lines at Oscar’s restaurant for breakfast so a couple of mornings we made a point of going a bit early.  The restaurant was fairly crowded, but going before 8am it was not too bad and we got a somewhat private table out of the way of guests walking to the buffet so it ended up being better than expectations.  

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The buffet itself has a large selection and quality was on par with Conrad brand hotels in Asia.  Fruit selection could probably be a bit better but hot choices were nice with noodle dishes, Indian dishes, grilled veggies, and a rotation of fried rice every day.  However one day the shrimp fried rice did not actually have any shrimps so they could be a bit more generous in that regard.  It’s not my thing, but some guests would probably enjoy the ice cream station for breakfast.  

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Another morning we went down to breakfast at 8:30am and we saw the dreaded long queue to enter the restaurant so we went to the lounge instead.  While we could enjoy a peaceful breakfast in one of the small separate rooms, we found the spread to be quite limited there, for example only one noodle dish and other warm items were standard and too western to our taste.  

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One advantage of the lounge breakfast is that they offer sparkling wine in the morning unlike in the restaurant.  Nowadays bubbly in the lounge for breakfast is getting harder to find so kudos to Conrad Singapore for still offering this perk which provides a more luxury experience.

The lounge also has free wine during the afternoon which very few Asian lounges have.  Happy hour 6-8pm had good selection of food but considerably crowded.  Unless you arrive early to get a seat in one of the small rooms with a table for two, you end up in the larger crowded room and sometimes even worse the only seats available were for a large table and two couples would have to share it by sitting together which is far from ideal.  

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They also have another lounge near the pool which probably helps in times of high occupancy.  Children are allowed in this second lounge but not in the main lounge on the 31st floor so for this reason we did not visit the alternative lounge during happy hour.

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With Amex FHR we had 100 USD for food & beverage (= 127 SGD, subpar exchange rate) but honestly even without this benefit Conrad would still be rock solid value because of the number of restaurants around the hotel plus the fact that happy hour had enough selection in the evening to make it a meal so the extra 100 USD was icing on the cake.  We used room service a couple of times and we liked the Indian and Singaporean dishes we ordered.  We would have been just fine without but hey why not use the perk if it’s offered.

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Wifi

Wifi worked very well during our stay with speeds of 45 Mbps.

Gym

The gym is somewhat small for a hotel of this size and even at 5am there was a decent number of guests exercising, although of course not to the point of being full yet.  At later times I suspect the gym could get close to full capacity.  

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Overall

Overall Conrad Singapore is not perfect but considering the price I found it to be great value for the money especially with newly refreshed rooms, decent breakfast, plus happy hour in the lounge.  In any city of the world where a Courtyard hotel is close in price to a Conrad (at least for my dates), you know that Conrad is not overpriced.  There are several luxury alternatives in Singapore such as Ritz Carlton and St.Regis but if Conrad is less than half the price, guests who are dissatisfied at Conrad are probably looking for something more upscale than Conrad, rather than being dissatisfied because Conrad would fail to deliver for the kind of hotel it’s supposed to be relative to the price they charge: premium, not luxury.  I can highly recommend Conrad especially to Diamond guests who are aware that you get great value at this property despite not scoring on the elusive suite upgrades.

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