Review: Peninsula Excelsior Hotel, Singapore

This post is a quick review of Peninsula Excelsior hotel, Singapore. With rooms priced in the range of SGD168 onwards, Peninsula Excelsior is a popular business hotel in the heart of Singapore. Has fairly good amount of facilities in each room and is a decent choice overall. Specific observations below

 

Good stuff:

• An Indian veg restaurant, Nalan is nearby. So finding homely food is easier
• A welcome letter from hotel management was nice.
• Windows that extend from ceiling to floor are nice
• Broadband, Breakfast included in room rent
• Room facilities include Bathroom slippers, dryer, torch, safety lock, newspaper
• Nice view of the city from windows (depends on which room you get)
• At the heart of city- very close to Singapore flyer, Raffel’s city mall etc
• Wake up call service is automated and very precise (if you don't respond to phone, some one will come and knock your door to wake you up)
•  Elevators are access controlled. This makes it secure, but the inconvenience is when you’ve to go to a different floor to meet your friend/colleague. You’ll need someone else to help you with access.
• Walkable from City Hall MRT. From airport, you can reach hotel with just 2 SGD if you can use the MRT (underground train system in Singapore). Costs about 20$ in taxi.

Not so good:

• Hotel seems to have 2 towers. Rooms with numbers 01-19 is in one tower, room numbers 20-49 are in another tower. These two are connected only at Lobby Level. If you are staying at say Room no 1503 and you colleague is at 1530, then to go to his room you should go all the way down to lobby, take help from hotel staff (since you won’t have access to the other tower) take another lift and go to 15^th floor. At times this is very inconvenient. If you’re staying in group, request the hotel to put all of you in same side.
• I’m told hotel has no loyalty program. Long stay won’t give you some points which might be of some use later.
• The pool is at lobby level, right in front of the reception. I feel some privacy will be nice for those using the pool.
• Laundry fee for one shirt is 7.5 Sing $, close to Rs 350.. at times that is almost as much as the value of the shirt
• Top floor has a sky lounge, accessible only to premium customers
• Couple of Asian/Indian food items in restaurant would have been nice
• Not all rooms are same. There're some generic differences from room to room. Some rooms have phone with speaker phone, some rooms have a bathroom with transparent window and so on

Nearby attractions: Clarke Quay * Reverse Bungee jumping * Fort Canning Centre * Singapore Museum * Singapore Philanthropic museum* St Andrew's Church * Raffel's City Mall

Easy connectivity to other parts of the city through City Hall MRT