Raffles Hotel Singapore – a colonial icon that still earns its legend

There are hotels that trade on their history and quietly stopped earning it decades ago. Then there’s Raffles Hotel Singapore – opened in 1887, designated a national monument in 1987, and somehow still one of the most genuinely impressive places you can sleep in Southeast Asia. I went in slightly skeptical. I came out converted. If you just watched the full walkthrough above and you’re now deep in a browser tab researching Courtyard Suite prices at 11pm – this breakdown is for you.

The stay was January 2025, one night in the Courtyard Suite King at S$2,005.93 (roughly $1,557 USD). All 115 rooms are suites – there is no standard room here. The afternoon tea, the Singapore Sling at Long Bar, dinner at 藝 yì by Jereme Leung, breakfast at Tiffin Room, the pool, the library, the shopping arcade – we covered it all. Here’s what actually matters.

136 years of history – and it shows (in the best way)

A little context because this place has a genuinely insane backstory. Raffles Singapore opened on December 1, 1887 with just 10 rooms and was literally called the Beach House because the sea came right up to it. The Sarkies Brothers – Persian-Armenian hoteliers – built it, and within a few years it was the place wealthy travelers passing through colonial Singapore stayed.

During World War II, the Japanese military requisitioned it and renamed it the Shonan Ryokan. After the Royal Navy recaptured Singapore in Operation Tiderace in 1945, it briefly became a British military barracks and a temporary POW camp. Then it reopened as a hotel in 1946 like nothing happened, which is a very Raffles thing to do.

The big renovation came between 1989 and 1991 – $160 million, two years closed, and the result was a full restoration to its 1915 appearance. That’s the building you’re walking into today. Every single room was converted into a suite during that renovation, which is why there are only 115 rooms despite the building being enormous.

Named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the British statesman credited with founding modern Singapore. Now managed by AccorHotels and owned by Katara Hospitality, a Qatari state-owned company. The flag has changed hands a few times but the building is legally untouchable – national monument status since 1987.

Arrival – the entrance earns its reputation immediately

The entrance on Beach Road does something that almost no modern luxury hotel can replicate: it makes you feel like you’ve stepped backward in time without feeling like a museum. Driveway lined with palm trees, Sikh doormen in traditional dress, colonial-white colonnaded facade. The lobby follows the same logic – high ceilings, tessellated tile floors, enormous floral arrangements, natural light pouring through.

It does not feel corporate. It doesn’t feel like a Marriott lobby that someone dressed up with colonial props. It feels like a building that was genuinely built to impress people in 1887 and has maintained that standard through three different wars, a pandemic, and the entire history of modern hospitality. That’s not nothing.

Check-in is personal. They walk you to your suite rather than handing you a keycard and pointing. The walk from lobby to suite is its own experience – long colonnaded corridors, internal courtyards, staircases – and the vlog documents this in full because it takes a solid few minutes and you realize on the way just how big and architecturally intricate this place actually is.

The Courtyard Suite – what S$2,005 a night looks like

The suite tour in the vlog runs about 11 minutes and that should tell you something about the size of the space. The Courtyard Suite King is not a modern hotel room with a sofa area appended to justify the suite label. It’s a proper suite.

Here’s what you’re getting:

• 🛏️ Separate living room and bedroom – genuinely separate, with a proper corridor between them, not just one room divided by a halfwall
• 🪑 Colonial-era furniture – four-poster king bed, rattan furniture, antique writing desk, the full period look done with real pieces, not reproductions from a catalogue
• 🛁 Enormous bathroom with a freestanding bathtub and walk-in rain shower, marble throughout
• 🌿 Courtyard-facing windows – views into one of the internal garden courtyards rather than a Singapore street or construction site, which is exactly what you want
• 📚 Curated books and period details throughout – this is a suite that feels like someone thought about it, not like a room assembled from a luxury hotel parts catalog
• ☕ Butler service – actual butler, not a concierge with a different job title

The ceilings are high. The air conditioning is excellent (critical in Singapore in January). The whole space has a kind of quiet gravitas that’s very different from the slick contemporary luxury you get at Marina Bay Sands or the Capella. This is aged confidence, not new money showing off.

At S$2,005 per night it is expensive – but the suite genuinely justifies it more than most hotel rooms at that price in Singapore do.

The afternoon tea – do not skip this

The afternoon tea at Raffles is one of those things that sounds touristy until you’re sitting there at 2pm with a three-tier stand of proper sandwiches and scones and you realize you’ve been there for 90 minutes without noticing. It runs in the Tiffin Room and it’s a proper colonial-era spread done well – not a themed gimmick.

Finger sandwiches, freshly baked scones with clotted cream and jam, miniature pastries, a pot of whatever tea you want. The Tiffin Room itself – high ceilings, paddle fans, white tablecloths – does a lot of the work. The service is unhurried in a way Singapore hotels rarely manage.

This is also where a lot of non-guests come just for the afternoon tea experience, which tells you something. If you’re visiting Singapore and not staying here, booking the tea is the most affordable way to experience the building properly.

Long Bar and the Singapore Sling – yes, you have to do it

The Singapore Sling was invented at Long Bar in 1915 by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon. You already know this. The point is – you can drink the original version of one of the world’s most famous cocktails at the bar where it was created, and that is genuinely worth doing regardless of whether you’re a cocktail person.

Long Bar is low-lit, wooden, colonial in feel, with peanut shells on the floor (the only place in Singapore where you can litter guilt-free – peanut shells are part of the tradition). The Singapore Sling itself is gin, cherry brandy, Bénédictine, Cointreau, pineapple juice, lime juice, grenadine, and bitters. It’s sweeter than you’d expect if you’ve been drinking serious cocktails lately, but that’s the original recipe and that’s the point.

A Singapore Sling at Long Bar costs around S$37. For context on what you’re paying for: it’s not the cocktail, it’s the location, the history, and the story. Order one, sit in a rattan chair, look at the room, and acknowledge that this specific bar has been doing this specific thing for over 100 years. Then order a second if you want.

Dining – three venues worth talking about

🍜 藝 yì by Jereme Leung – Chinese fine dining done seriously

Dinner on night one was at 藝 yì by Jereme Leung, which is the Chinese fine dining restaurant in the hotel and one of the better Chinese restaurants in Singapore full stop. Chef Jereme Leung’s cooking pulls from regional Chinese traditions – Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuanese influences – and the presentation is serious. This isn’t hotel Chinese food. The private dining rooms and the main restaurant feel appropriate to the building – understated luxury, proper tableware, excellent service.

For Singapore, where the competition in Chinese dining is genuinely brutal, yì holds its own. The Peking duck and the dim sum are both worth ordering. Budget for a proper dinner here – two people with wine will be in the S$250-400 range depending on what you order.

🍳 Tiffin Room – breakfast worth waking up for

Breakfast at Tiffin Room is included with some rate categories and worth upgrading to if it isn’t. The room itself – the ceiling fans, the white walls, the morning light – is the reason to eat here rather than in your suite. The spread is extensive: fresh tropical fruit, pastries, made-to-order eggs, proper coffee, the full works. The vlog spends six minutes here and you’ll understand why when you see the footage.

Tiffin Room also does the afternoon tea and Indian-influenced buffet dinners that are popular with Singapore locals, not just hotel guests. It’s a real restaurant inside a hotel, not a hotel restaurant that happens to exist.

🍸 Other dining options on property

Beyond yì and Tiffin Room, the property has the Raffles Grill (European fine dining, jackets preferred, wine list is serious), BBR by Alain Ducasse in the courtyard (more casual, still excellent), and the Writers Bar – a quieter bar named after the writers who stayed at Raffles over the decades. Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad all passed through. The cocktail menu references the literary history and the bar feels appropriately bookish and unhurried.

The rest of the property – library, pool, gym, courtyard

📚 The second floor – library and quiet spaces

The second floor has a proper guest library – actual books, reading chairs, the kind of space that makes you want to cancel your afternoon plans. There are several quiet sitting areas and smaller function rooms up here, all keeping the colonial aesthetic. Not every guest finds it because it doesn’t announce itself. Worth seeking out if you want somewhere to sit that isn’t the lobby or your suite.

🏊 Third floor – pool and gym

The pool is on the third floor, which sounds like it shouldn’t work but does. It’s an outdoor pool surrounded by the white colonial architecture of the building – laps in a pool inside a national monument. The gym is modern and well-equipped, which feels slightly incongruous with the rest of the building but is genuinely useful. Both are exclusively for hotel guests.

🌿 The Courtyard

The central courtyard garden is one of those spaces that doesn’t photograph as well as it feels in person. Surrounded on all sides by the white colonial facade, tropical planting, natural light filtering through. This is where the Courtyard Suite faces. BBR by Alain Ducasse operates out of here for lunch and dinner. In the evenings it’s lit softly and it’s probably the most peaceful place in the middle of Singapore’s CBD that you can find.

The shopping arcade and Raffles Boutique

The ground floor of the hotel includes a covered shopping arcade with around 40 retailers – mix of international luxury brands and local Singaporean designers and food producers. The Raffles Boutique sells hotel-branded merchandise, the Raffles Singapore Sling mix, specialty teas, branded stationery and accessories. If you want to bring something back from Singapore that isn’t airport chocolate, the boutique is the answer. The Singapore Sling mix in the gift tin is the obvious buy.

Getting there and practical details

The hotel is at 1 Beach Road, Singapore 189673 – right at the edge of the Colonial District, walking distance from Marina Bay Sands, the National Gallery, and Chijmes. The nearest MRT is City Hall station (about a 5-minute walk). Taxis and Grab (Singapore’s Uber) are straightforward from anywhere in the city.

Flying into Singapore means landing at Changi Airport (SIN) – consistently ranked the world’s best airport. From Changi to the hotel: MRT on the East West Line to City Hall is about 30 minutes and costs around S$2. Grab from the airport is around S$25-35 depending on time of day. Neither is complicated.

Best time to visit Singapore: February to April is the driest stretch – lower humidity, less rain, easier for walking around. December and January (which is when this stay happened) are also solid – slightly more rainfall but still warm, and the city is in post-Christmas mode which is lively. Avoid late October and November if you dislike heavy afternoon rain. Singapore is broadly a year-round destination but the dry months make a genuine difference for a city-based trip.

Pricing and points – how people actually make this work

Cash rate for the Courtyard Suite King as of January 2025: S$2,005.93 (approximately $1,557 USD) per night. That’s the entry-level suite. Larger suites, the Palm Court Suites, and the Presidential Suite go considerably higher.

Points angles worth knowing:

• ALL points – Raffles Singapore participates in the ALL (Accor Live Limitless) loyalty program. Points earn on stays and can be used for room upgrades, dining credits, and in theory rate redemptions – though the cash rate is high enough that cash redemptions aren’t always the best use of ALL points here
• Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts – Raffles Singapore is on the FHR program. Booking through FHR typically includes a $150+ food and beverage credit, room upgrade on arrival when available, complimentary breakfast for two daily, and 4pm checkout. On a S$2,000/night room this is a genuinely significant stack of benefits
• Virtuoso rates – if you book through a Virtuoso travel advisor you get similar amenity stacking to FHR. Worth comparing both before booking
• Book direct through Raffles – the official site sometimes has rates that third-party platforms don’t, and direct bookings get better flexibility on cancellation

Is it expensive? Yes. Is it the most expensive luxury hotel in Singapore? Not even close – Four Seasons, Capella, and Raffles’ own Presidential Suite will all do more damage. The Courtyard Suite is the entry point into a national monument and a proper piece of Singapore history. Most people who stay once come back.

Frequently asked questions

📹 Video by ST Travel