The best $150m the Mandarin Oriental Singapore ever spent

Gardens and greenery pervade, whether real – the hotel curates its own beautiful orchids with a dedicated in-house team – or in artwork. A vast carpet depicting hundreds of lilies coats the floor of the atrium, and is visible from the internal balconies and lifts.

The light and colour is not only refreshing, it makes the whole place seem bigger, and this applies to the rooms too. The bay-facing suites really are bigger, twice the size because of the elimination of interior walls, a process that reduced the number of rooms in the hotel from 527 to 510.

The interior design corresponds with the view: water-facing rooms feature light blue pillows and furnishings.

My wife and I arrived to check out the new suites at the end of October, just weeks after the hotel reopened: Life & Leisure was the first publication invited to review. We’ve lived in Singapore for more than 14 years over two stints going back to 2006 and have been visiting since the ’90s, so we’ve seen Marina Bay rise and flourish; we’ve also seen the Suntec part of town, where the Mandarin Oriental resides, rise and fall before being lifted again by the bay development and Formula 1.

So we are intrigued to see how the hotel feels in light of this evolution. Along with the Ritz-Carlton next door, it used to be the places to stay for business travellers. But new competitors like The Fullerton Bay Hotel and The Westin have entered the fray, while Raffles, too, has been thoroughly revamped.

When we stayed in the Mandarin for a staycation in 2021, it was pleasant but felt dated (and brown), lacking a sense of place. How would it feel now? Would it seem relevant, magnetic once more?

The short answer is yes. There’s no doubting we are in Singapore: the glass doors at the entrance remind you of the classic Peranakan shophouse fronts one still sees in the city; the terrazzo flooring in the lobby evokes those found in many south-east Asian homes.

A new cake shop in the lobby sells local delicacies, also made on site. A Moët & Chandon vending machine on the fifth floor is harder to place culturally, but adds a sense of fun.

The “home-team” theme is most evident in the bars and restaurants. Only one restaurant is wholly new: Melt, a common haunt for business breakfast meetings for many years, has been replaced by embu, whose name is drawn from the middle letters of the tembusu tree, a local evergreen. Greenery is everywhere now, while canopy structures between the tables recall the nearby Supertree Grove on Marina Bay.

The Mandarin’s bar, MO, has kept its name but changed both its appearance and its outlook. Now much more blue than brown, with the original art deco features preserved in its ceiling and bar, it’s the drinks selection that evokes a Singaporean ambience.

MO bar manager Charlie Kim says the bar “features a brand-new menu of cocktails infused with a local twist”. So Iced Lemon Tea is actually a spin on a gin and tonic, with the gin infused with the hotel’s own brand of tea and home-made limoncello. The Reclaimed Sling distills the famous Singapore Sling and serves it as a lollipop garnish to a martini-styled cocktail.

And for the first time, the hotel has linked with the Mandala Club, a private members club housed in a 1928 building in Chinatown. It was formerly the New Majestic Hotel, but recent visitors to Singapore are more likely to remember it as the Straits Clan club (it changed hands in 2021).

Inspired by a chance encounter between Philipp Knuepfer and Ben Jones, founder and chief executive of Mandala Group, Mandala members get access to the Mandarin’s 21st-floor Haus 65 lounge, while hotel guests with lounge access (166 suites and Marina Bay View rooms fit the bill, or about one-third of guest rooms) can visit the Mandala Club.

The deal offers more than mutual access; the idea here is for co-curation. Mandala Club’s wine program will be available at Haus 65, and various Mandala cultural events will be held there. As for Mandarin Oriental guests, they get something quite different to the usual hotel experience: Mandala Club is the most atmospheric of Singapore’s private members clubs, full of nooks and crannies that lend themselves to quirky ideas.

For example, when I visit, one room has become an elegant 12-guest Japanese restaurant set around a U-shaped counter, while another has a ceiling filled to the last square inch with disco balls.

The refurbishment has done much more than refresh the hotel – it has given it a sense of vitality, space and local flavour that warrants a fresh visit. It is not cheap (nothing in Singapore is, these days) but the Mandarin Oriental earns its place at the top tier of Marina Bay’s competitive range of hotels.

The writer was a guest of Mandarin Oriental, Singapore.