By Matthew Brace
Intro
The Quincy Hotel Singapore is a small, quiet, adult-oriented, four-star hotel, nestled among residential buildings, tennis courts and pools in the affluent Orchard Road area. It’s a welcome change from the glitz and glamour of the big five-stars, and great for couples looking for peaceful, relaxing evenings after busy days exploring the city and shopping up a storm; you can walk home from Orchard Road with all your purchases.
Overview
First and foremost, this is definitely a hotel for adults. There are no kids’ facilities at the pool, nor do any of the 108 rooms have extra beds or interconnecting doors, which families often look for. So it makes sense that the hotel’s guests are predominantly romantic couples. They are visiting Singapore to see the sights and check out the scores of fabulous restaurants. Others are on a 24- or 48-hour transfer en route to the beaches of Bali or the temples of Thailand.
The hotel also prioritises guests’ freedom, with extended breakfast/brunch hours (7am – 3pm), an all-day lobby lounge (for hotel guests only) with small snacks, soft drinks and tea and coffee (and alcohol for a fee), and canapes and two rounds of complimentary beer and wine in the evening.
It’s a blissfully unrushed place – very different to the huge Singapore hotels with their breakfast queues and overcrowded pools – and guests obviously love it because it was recently included in Tripadvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Best of the Best category for 2022.
Look and feel
Only on our approach to the hotel by taxi did we see just how slim it is. If not for the white neon sign up on façade of the top floor, we would have taken it for another of the swish Orchard Road apartment buildings. We also caught a glimpse of the cut-away section on the 12th floor that houses the very well-equipped indoor gym and great outdoor pool, one end of which overhangs the south wall by about a metre.
On the ground floor, the lobby stretches the length of the building and is taken up mainly by a casual, café-style lounge, which becomes a focal point each evening when guests gather for canapes and drinks.
For us it was the rooms that really made the hotel special. They were more luxurious than we had imagined, each with a super-comfy king bed and a cute window-seat where we gazed out over the Orchard Road neighbourhood.
Best room for two
The hotel has 24 Premium rooms (32sqm) and 84 Deluxe rooms (26sqm). We were in a Premium Room on a high floor at the southern end of the building, with views south and west; perfect for watching the sunset.
The main benefits of taking a Premium room over a Deluxe are a Nespresso coffee machine, a choice of mini-bar items to welcome you and more space. Being your own barista first thing in the morning was very convenient – no need to shower and fix your hair before going down to the lounge for a flat white.
The extra space comes in handy too if you’ve gone nuts in the Orchard Road boutiques and find yourself with rather more bags than you planned for. It’s going to be especially useful if you’re in town during the city’s famous, six-week shopping extravaganza in September and October, formerly called the Great Singapore Sale and now the GSS: Experience Singapore.
If a Nespresso machine and heaps of space are not your priorities, then go for a Deluxe room; they also boast a king bed, bathtub for two and a window-seat, and have a kettle with tea and instant coffee. All rooms have an iron and ironing board, ideal for getting ready for a night out.
Food and drink
The hotel doesn’t have a restaurant but in many ways you don’t need one because a short walk or taxi ride away you have the choice of everything from a Michelin-starred gastronomic feast to cheap and cheerful Singapore street food at local ‘hawker markets’. So much of the fun of Singapore is discovering its great little eateries.
The hotel does, however, have its 6–8pm happy hour in the lobby lounge, offering a serving of free hot and cold canapes (different every day) and two rounds of beer or wine. We arrived after a long flight from Europe just after sunset, in time for the second hour. The Singapore chilli prawns and smoked salmon rolls with cream cheese wet down well with a couple of ice-cold Tiger beers; just what we needed after our long flight but also light enough to ensure we slept well.
During the day, you can get small packet snacks and soft drinks in the lobby lounge plus tea and coffee on request. Alcohol is available to buy but last orders is strictly 10.30pm.
The lounge café services breakfast from 7am to a very generous 3pm. We nearly always head out for breakfast in Singapore, grabbing a congee and coffee at a hawker market, but if you have a flight to catch and don’t want to get sweaty all over again before heading to the airport, the hotel’s Asian and Western breakfast/brunch dishes are useful.
Couples will love
The quiet, understated and grown-up nature of the hotel, with an emphasis on adults rather than kids. They will also love its location – a 10-minute walk from Orchard Road – sitting on their room’s cute window-seat-with-a-view, the evening happy hour and the great 12th floor outdoor pool.
Book via the Quincy Hotel Singapore website https://www.fareasthospitality.com/en/Hotels/The-Quincy-Hotel#, call +65 6881 8888or email info.tqh@fareast.com.sg
