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It’s got very walkable resort grounds and a great bar to relax in. The flipside: its Luxury Room is better than most, but can be a little tight in places.
The Sofitel Singapore Sentosa Resort and Spa’s real charm is its 27 acres of resort grounds. Not only did we enjoy strolling through its sheltered walkways past its gardens and pools, we loved relaxing by the water at its open-air lounge and bar LeBar. There was even direct access to Tanjong Beach, just 132 steps down the stairs next to the swimming pool. However, its Luxury Room can be tight in places. While we love its resort grounds, we think there are better rooms in this price range, like the W Singapore – Sentosa Cove’s Wonderful Room.
We review anonymously and pay for everything. All opinions expressed here are our own and all information is correct as of our last stay or visit and subject to change without notice.
We don’t think the Luxury Room can be accused of being cookie-cutter boring and it’s not just because of its “surprising decorative touches”[1]. The entire layout of the room was unusual: its entrance opened into a hallway between the bedroom and bathroom. While we liked the novelty of the layout, it came at the cost of space, leaving parts of the 36m2 room a little tight. While we liked the bedroom’s free-standing writing desk as a workspace, its side of the bed felt a little squeezed. There was more space in front of the bed, in part because the table under the wall-mounted TV was so slender. But this reduced the surface space to place our belongings, leaving us with little choice but to turn to the writing desk and wardrobe shelves.
The 55-inch TV was big and offered the most TV channels: 50[2], with FOX Movies Premium, FOX Family Movies, and FOX Action Movies for English movies. There were no pay-per-view or movie rental options however.
The complimentary in-room coffee and tea selection also went beyond the basic. In addition to TWG Tea, there was an iPerEspresso single-serve espresso machine by Illy and sachets of Davidoff Café Grande Cuvée Fine Aroma instant coffee. The minibar contained more snacks and drinks, though these weren’t complimentary. For more options, the (non-complimentary) in-room dining menu also offered wines by the bottle.
The bathroom also felt a little squeezed. While a separate toilet room had been sectioned off in the corner of the bathroom, it felt tight. The bath tub also had to be combined with the shower — the only way to include a bath tub, we suspect. It wasn’t perfect: water from the handheld showerhead tended to run along the sides of the bath tub and spill out onto the bathroom floor. We preferred using the rain shower to reduce the mess. The toiletries were by French fashion house Lanvin: shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion from its orange amber line. We were disappointed however that there was no bubble bath — even from housekeeping.
See our in-depth review and pictures of this breakfast buffet.
We felt the breakfast buffet at the hotel’s pan-Asian restaurant Kwee-Zeen was good overall despite some misses. Basics like eggs, breakfast meats, hash browns, waffles, pancakes, and French toast met our expectations. However, we thought its croissants — nicely flaky on the outside but compressed and hard in the middle — could have been better. From the sizeable selection of Asian food, we liked the nasi kuning — rice cooked with coconut milk and turmeric — and chicken congee best.
We normally don’t think of hotel bars as integral to the hotel experience — nice but not a must. But we’ll highlight LeBar as the exception here. We feel we’d be missing out if we stayed here without stopping by LeBar to relax at one of its tables along the walkways by the water. At night, the lights dim; there’s live music from a jazz singer and pianist from 7:45–10:30pm from Tuesdays to Sundays. Drinks here were only a little pricier than other hotel bars we’ve reviewed. We found it odd that there was no wine list — especially considering the hotel’s efforts to flaunt its French branding — though there was a decent selection of other drinks. Cocktail enthusiasts may be interested to know that the cocktail menu included a good selection of unique signature drinks, some of which were tagged as premium with correspondingly higher prices.
Considering how much the hotel kept flaunting its French branding, we were expecting the in-room dining to impress us with its French classics. Instead, there were some big misses. The French onion soup turned up completely liquid, tasting mainly of beef stock without a hint of the caramelised onions we thought should be inside. The meat in the veal blanquette was also dry and the sauce itself way too salty for us. Only the steak frites lived up to our expectations, though the red juices seeping out of the meat suggested it need a little more resting.
The breakfast service fared better, we felt. We loved the Norwegian smoked salmon served with chewy bagels and a generous stack of cream cheese — we just wished there were more salmon and bagels to match the cheese. From the list of breakfast sets, we ordered the American classic breakfast (French continental, Singapura, and healthy sets were also available). We thought the scrambled eggs weren’t bad even though we weren’t fans of its strong dairy flavour; the bacon however had lost all crisp and was just hard.
We thought the hotel’s 27 acres of resort grounds were the real highlight of our stay. Its sheltered walkways along gardens and pools made for lovely strolling. We feel a stay here wouldn’t be complete either without visiting LeBar, the hotel’s open-air lounge and bar, to relax at a table along the walkways by the water. Alternatively, there’s a pool next to LeBar filled with garra rufa — fish that’ll nibble dead skin right off your feet and legs — for free “fish spa” or “doctor fish” treatments.
Beyond the sheltered walkways are its So FIT gym and So SPA, located outside the main hotel grounds. The hotel provided a shuttle bus from its lobby to So SPA, but it’s also possible to walk there in about five minutes, past the hotel’s two floodlit tennis courts. The tennis courts were open to hotel guests while rackets and balls were also available for borrowing — all without charge. So SPA also houses its children’s club Villa des Enfants[1] which offered two free hours of distraction and fun for children aged 4–11.
The hotel’s main 33m swimming pool featured shallow and deep sections, divided by a rope. We soon learned to heed the rope — as should parents and inexperienced swimmers — when a wrong step surprised us with a steep drop into the deep section going 2.5m down. More so than usual, parents should keep a close eye on their children. With children and leisure swimmers kept to the shallow section, we found our laps through the deep section reduced of interruption. But it’s not an especially wide pool and, more than once, giant inflatable swimming floats — available for purchase from the poolside bar — drifted over into our lane.
In addition to giant inflatable floats, sunscreen lotion, aloe vera gel, and insect repellent spray, the poolside bar also served food and drink. Finger food options included fried battered calamari, crispy silver fish, Belgian fries, satay, wasabi prawns, and pizza. Desserts included ice cream, profiteroles, fruit, and a lemon tart. The beverage selection included an extensive list of cocktails, fresh Thai coconuts spiked with a shot of rum, smoothies, and wines served by the bottle.
Given its location near So SPA outside the main hotel grounds, we didn’t find the hotel’s So FIT gym very convenient. Getting there meant waiting for the hotel’s shuttle bus from the lobby to So SPA, making the five-minute unsheltered walk there, or summoning a buggy from the concierge. It may also matter to some that the gym is not open 24 hours. Because of the inconvenience however, So FIT tended to be empty when we visited. While the gym wasn’t lacking in terms of floor space, the odd placement of some equipment vis-à-vis the building’s pillars left some areas feeling a little tight. Still, the gym did include some unusual equipment like a Power Plate vibration platform and a Cybex Arc Trainer. For those looking for guidance, the gym had cards containing suggested workout routines with such self-explanatory names like Calorie Killer, Jet Lag Liberation, Body Shape, and Zen.
Across the road from So FIT is the largest So SPA in the world, which was the Luxury Urban Escape continent winner for Asia in the 2017 World Luxury Spa Awards. The spa’s signature massage treatment is its SGD224[2] “euphoric and soothing” 60-minute So Exhilarating Massage “that will shape and tone up your silhouette”[3]. The spa has other massage treatments like its So Relaxing, Deep Tissue Oriental, So Abhyanga, Lome-maé, and Sentosa Massages which cost SGD212[4] for 60 minutes.
A treatment of at least 60 minutes also provided access to its outdoor spa garden and wet facilities. These included a 22m lap pool, a mud pool with Moroccan rhassoul clay, a float pool for massages by waterfall, and a “labyrinth” to “meditate as you walk”. These weren’t complimentary for hotel guests without a treatment, though they got a discounted price of SGD47[5] for all-day access — it’s SGD71[6] for non-hotel guests.
2 Bukit Manis Road Sentosa 099891
(+65) 67088310
https://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-9474-sofitel-singapore-sentosa-resort-spa/index.shtml
