Review: St Regis Singapore (Caroline Astor Suite)

We stayed at the St Regis Singapore for two nights in November 2021, which is located on Tanglin Road, just off Singapore’s main shopping district, Orchard Road. The last time we stayed at this property was back in 2019 and thus we wanted to check out the property again to see how things have changed since the pandemic.

Hotel Background and Information

St Regis Singapore opened in 2007 and it is part of a development that includes residential apartments, which are adjacent to the hotel. St Regis Singapore houses over 70 works of art by both local and internationally renowned artists.

The hotel has 299 rooms, with the breakdown of the room types as follows:

St Regis Singapore is slightly further away from Orchard Road compared to Four Seasons Hotel Singapore which we stayed at in the previous month. Despite the hotel being further away from the shopping belt, it is still within walking distance to many of the malls and restaurants Orchard Road has to offer.

Location of tourist attractions near the hotel | Source: Google Maps

Metro stations that are near the hotel:

1. Orchard (9 mins) – North South line (NS22)

For non-locals, tourist attractions that are near the hotel:

1. Orchard Road (8 mins walk)
2. Singapore Botanical Gardens (15 mins walk)
3. National Museum of Singapore (20 mins by Bus 36/ 7)

Nearby Malls:

1. Wheelock Place (6 mins walk) – Mall where a Marks & Spencer can be found.
2. Liat Towers (7 mins walk) – Singapore’s first Starbucks is located here. There is also a Shake Shack and a Hermes boutique store.
3. Forum The Shopping Mall (2 mins walk) – Several high-end clothing stores and a few restaurants.
4. Shaw House/ Shaw Centre (8 Mins walk) – Japanese department store Isetan (with supermarket) can be found. Has numerous restaurants from the 3 Michelin Star Les Amis to Japanese ramen chain Ippudo. A food court can also be found here.
5. ION Orchard (10 mins walk) – Huge mall with a supermarket, food court, restaurants, and luxury boutique stores.
6. Palais Renaissance (5 mins walk) – Mall with numerous dining options.
7. Tang Plaza (15 Mins walk) – Modern long running department store with a café.
8. Wisma Atria (13 mins walk) – Typical mall.
9. Ngee Ann City (14 mins walk) – Luxury mall. Japanese department store Takashimaya and a supermarket can be found in the midst of luxury stores such as Louis Vuitton, Boss, Chanel, Tiffany & Co. Numerous dining options can be found here as well.
10. Knightsbridge Mall (17 mins walk) – Location of one of three Apple Stores in Singapore. Not much else can be found here.
11. Paragon Shopping Centre (18 mins walk) – Another luxury mall with restaurants.

Booking Process and Pricing

For this stay, we had booked the Caroline Astor Suite through Klook (an online travel booking platform). Klook was selling staycation packages back then and by using a promo code and a discounted gift card we paid just under SGD 400 a night including breakfast which is a decent deal.

Do bear in mind that for third party/ OTA bookings like the above, you will not earn Marriott Bonvoy points or elite nights. Thus, unless we can get a much lower price through an OTA, we would rather book directly on the hotel’s website or through a Marriott Stars travel agent for perks like a property credit, complimentary upgrade, and breakfast (on a flexible rate if the maths works out).

Check-in & Lobby

A pre-arrival email was sent about a week before our stay asking for the usual stuff like our expected arrival time. We responded the next day with a reservations request for afternoon tea during our stay but unfortunately, we did not get a response from the hotel. It was only after a chaser that we got a response the night before our stay. We guess the hotel was shorthanded since our stay coincided with Bloomberg New Economy Forum 2021 and there were a lot of guests staying at the hotel over this period.

We arrived at the hotel at around fifteen past eleven on a Sunday morning and there were just two groups of guests ahead of us. Despite the relatively short queue, we waited for almost half an hour before we were attended to as only one check-in counter was open at that time. 

During check-in, the front desk gave us the welcome letter and explained our suite benefits and the whole process took 15 minutes. We thought the entire check-in process was very slow as it took about 45 minutes from the time we arrived till we got our room keys and we did not even check-in at peak hour.

As it is the norm at St Regis Hotels, guests are entitled to the 24-hour St Regis butler service which includes:

• Unpacking and packing of your luggage
• All-day in-room complimentary hot tea, coffee or chocolate
• 2-piece garment pressing per day, non-accumulative
• Butler drawn bubble bath
• Shoeshine services

In addition, suite guests are accorded the following benefits:

• Option to have breakfast in room with choices from the private dining breakfast menu
• Daily Aperitivo Hour which includes one beverage of choice and antipasti

Room: Caroline Astor Suite

Our suite measures 90 sqm (968 sqft) with separate living and bedroom areas. The suite is a corner room located on level 16 of the hotel.

Once in the suite, you will find yourself in a small foyer, which leads to the living area, bedroom, and powder room/ Master toilet. The foyer has a full-length mirror and a minibar.

On the minibar, there is a Nespresso machine with four Nespresso coffee capsules, complimentary bottles of water, six TWG teabags, various glasses, and a kettle.

Due to the pandemic, the minibar fridge was empty but the items are still for sale should you want to purchase them. The minibar menu can be found on the minibar.

Also on the minibar is the complimentary drinks menu that is included as part of the butler service. Hot chocolate is not listed on the menu but it is an option that is available as well.

The living area has a three-seater sofa as well as a coffee table sandwiched between two armchairs. The area was very spacious and there was plenty of space around even with all the furniture.

Being a corner suite, the living area had wrap around windows which allowed lots of natural light in, making the suite feel much brighter.

There wasn’t much of a view from the living area. To the left, there is the St Regis residences, Regent Singapore, and Tanglin Road. On the right side of the window, there is the Botanic Gardens in the background and several private apartments around the hotel.

A 55-inch Samsung television can be found in the living area which can swivel as needed.

The television channel available consists of a mixture of local and international television channels as shown below. Our apologies for the slightly blurred image.

There isn’t a dedicated work desk in the suite but the living area does have a workspace just in front of the television. Two 230V power outlets can be found here.

Guests enjoy complimentary WIFI and we did a test on the WIFI speed as follows:

The workspace is where the hygiene kit was placed and it consisted of two surgical masks and one bottle of hand sanitizer.

The welcome amenity is a box of pralines accompanied by a hand-written welcome note which was a nice touch.

From the living area, the bedroom can be accessed via the foyer. In the bedroom, there is a comfortable king-sized bed in the centre, and another 55-inch Samsung television.

There is a bedside table on both sides of the bed, which is where you can find the electronic controls. There is a phone, a 230V AC power outlet with 2 USB-A outlets, and a Geneva Bluetooth speaker which doubles up as a clock on one bedside table while the other has one 230V AC power outlet.

The power outlets can be difficult to spot as they are located within the open storage space below the electronic controls.

The electronic controls in the bedroom sure have lots of electrical switches. In addition to the master switch, night light, and privacy switch, there are a few different lighting options and switches to control the curtains.

The dressing area in the bedroom comes equipped with a long mirror placed in the centre of a glass panel that allows you to look into the bathroom. The blinds can be lowered from a switch in the bathroom for privacy.

Next to the dressing area is the walk-in wardrobe which separates the bedroom from the bathroom. The in-room safe can be found here along with the luggage rack, umbrella, and shoe brush.

The hotel’s laundry service pricelist is as follows:

The bathroom is decked out in marble and has a double vanity setup, a freestanding bathtub with a bathroom television, and separate areas for the shower and the toilet. The bathtub was large enough for two.

A rain shower and a handheld shower head are installed in the shower area and they are Toto branded. Water temperature was consistent and water pressure was strong. A standout feature of the shower setup is the presence of three built-in massage jets.

The toiletries for St Regis hotels are usually from Laboratoire Remède, the hotel’s in-house spa brand, but for this stay, while most of the toiletries were from Remède, the body wash was from Pharmacopia.

It could be that the hotel could have simply run out of Remède branded body wash. The toothpaste is from Colgate.

The bathroom toilet doubles up as the powder room and there is a second door that leads back to the foyer. There is nothing fanciful about the toilet; just a traditional toilet seat with a handheld spray.

Facilities

The hotel has an outdoor swimming pool, which is open to guests with a booking only. Guests can either make the booking by phone or scan a QR code on the welcome letter to make the booking through the hotel’s in-house booking portal.

There are eight available time slots to choose from with each lasting an hour. Each timeslot can accommodate a maximum of 18 guests.

The pool is suitable for laps and there are many loungers around the pool. It was quiet when we visited after breakfast on a weekday.

Like the pool, the fitness centre also requires guests to make a booking as well. Each session is 75 minutes long and the fitness centre can take up to five guests a session. We did not visit the fitness centre during our stay.

St Regis Singapore has a Remède spa which we did not visit. From our understanding, the spa’s wet lounge facilities are open to in-house guests for a fee. Previously guests could enjoy these facilities for free but that is no longer the case.

You can browse through the spa menu using the booking portal if you are interested in the treatments.

Dining & Breakfast

St Regis Singapore has four restaurants and a bar.

Brasserie Les Saveurs is the hotel’s all-day dining restaurant. Outside breakfast hours, the restaurant serves French cuisine as well as afternoon tea. During our stay, the hotel had a collaboration with local artisan chocolate maker, Fossa Chocolate; offering a Fossa Chocolate-themed afternoon tea experience. We did try out the Fossa Chocolate-themed afternoon tea, albeit in room as the restaurant was full, and we’ll share more about this later in the post.

Yan Ting serves Cantonese cuisine and is open for lunch and dinner. On weekends and public holidays, it offers dim sum brunch as well with two seating.

Astor Bar is a cocktail bar where Aperitivo Hour is held. The signature drink here is the Chili Padi Mary.

Shinji By Kanesaka is a one Michelin star Japanese restaurant that offers an Omakase experience.

Tentsuru is the hotel’s other Japanese restaurant that focuses on tempura dishes.

Aperitivo Hour, which suite guests and Marriott elite members (platinum and above) are entitled to, is held at Astor bar when it is open. On Mondays and Tuesdays when Astor bar is closed, the food and drinks would be sent to the room instead.

Guests will have to book a slot through the hotel’s booking portal similar to the pool and fitness centre bookings to secure a slot.

On our first evening, we went to Astor Bar for Aperitivo Hour. Astor Bar was pretty empty and there were only two other tables that were occupied and never got crowded throughout our whole time there.

Upon arrival, we were quickly seated and there was a QR code to scan for the menu. You get a choice of several cocktails, red or white wine, and several non-alcoholic options plus a set of antipasti to go with the drinks.

Service was quick and we didn’t have to wait long for our food to be served. The antipasti were great though the drinks were a little diluted.

Astor Bar was closed on the second day of our stay; thus, the drinks and antipasti were sent to our room instead for Aperitivo Hour. Antipasti largely remained the same as day one except for the mini sandwich which was swapped for a slider.

As mentioned earlier, the hotel was having a collaboration with Fossa Chocolate on a chocolate-themed afternoon tea which we decided to give it a go.

Unfortunately, there was a lapse in service in the afternoon tea reservation process. We made a reservation as part of our pre-arrival correspondence with the hotel but were told that Brasserie Les Saveurs was full and we could have afternoon tea in the room instead. We did not receive a response after indicating that we did not mind having the afternoon tea in the room and gave the green light to proceed with confirming the order.

During check-in, we asked if our afternoon tea order was received and were assured that it was and the food will be sent to our room as requested. However, the afternoon tea was not delivered at the requested time and we called to enquire about it after twenty minutes had passed.

To our surprise, we were told that there were no records of our order and the restaurant would be preparing it immediately. When we eventually got our afternoon tea set it was well over an hour after the time we originally requested for.

Service issues aside, we liked the afternoon tea and most of the items were good. There was a mixture of sweet and savoury items with the sweet items mostly placed in a three-tier stand while the savoury items were on a separate plate. Scones and puddings were included as well along with a pot of TWG tea.

Suite guests can choose to either have breakfast at Brasserie Les Saveurs or in the room. We opted to have breakfast at the restaurant on the first morning and in room on the second.

Reservations are required for breakfast at Brasserie Les Saveurs. This can be done through the hotel’s booking portal just like all other bookings.

There was no wait when we arrived at the restaurant for breakfast and were quickly seated. The restaurant was about three-quarters full during our time there. Breakfast is in ala carte form and the menu can be retrieved via a QR code. Each person is limited to two mains.

We were first served the breadbasket and the fruits followed by the drinks.

After which the Epicurean omelette was served. It was not too bad but we didn’t feel that it lived up to the hype.

The mains were then served which consists of Laksa and Nasi Lemak. The Laksa was rather average tasting and the Nasi Lemak was nothing fancy either.

Service was fast but there weren’t any items that stood out for breakfast at Brasserie Les Saveurs. The portions given were reasonable but we felt that the hotel should not have restricted guests to two mains only.

In contrast to breakfast at Brasserie Les Saveurs, guests do not have to make a reservation through the booking portal for in-room breakfast. There is a breakfast menu card located in the room, which you fill up and then hang outside your room before 3 am.

The in-room breakfast menu differs from that of the restaurant; you are given an option of four breakfast sets to choose from. There is a St Regis breakfast set, Continental, Asian, and Japanese breakfast set.

We choose the Asian breakfast with Idly-Vadai as the main as well as the Japanese breakfast. Breakfast did arrive promptly at our requested timeslot.

The Japanese breakfast was disappointing and compared poorly to the Japanese breakfast we had at Four Seasons Hotel Singapore. Asian breakfast with Idly-Vadai was passable.

Overall, the breakfast at St Regis was nothing to get excited about. We would not recommend paying for breakfast if it was not included given that the hotel is pretty accessible to numerous food options nearby.

Overall Impression

St Regis is one of our favourite luxury hotel brands. However, we have mixed feelings when it comes to St Regis Singapore.

To sum things up:

St Regis Singapore is a decent luxury option that we would not mind returning to in the future if the price is right. Having said that, we would not go out of the way to stay at the property.