Raffles Hotel Singapore reopens after multi-million-dollar renovation

After an 18-month multi-million-dollar renovation, the legendary hotel has reopened.

The Raffles Singapore has reopened after an 18-month renovation.

In the fast-paced world of tourism and hospitality, a hotel launch or refurbishment usually attracts minor fanfare. But when an establishment is a byword for luxury and legend, such an unveiling is akin to a star-studded opening night.

Raffles Singapore reopens today after a multi-million-dollar makeover by its owner, the government of Qatar, over the past 18 months. The pure white neoclassical hotel was built in 1887, the first in Singapore with electricity and ceiling fans, and has undergone matronly nips and tucks over the past 132 years but none as thorough and technology-driven as the latest incarnation. Like all great establishments, Raffles Singapore has legions of loyal fans, some so faithful that they stay for long periods every year, almost as a form of voluntary convalescence.

The Raffles Hotel Singapore.

The perfect place for high tea.

One such habitue has been in residence for the past few weeks during the pre-opening phase, casually dressed but imperiously installed at a lobby table, as workmen have put finishing touches to paint, plasterwork and arrangement of furnishings. I’m told she has continued to make her regular pilgrimages to Raffles since it closed in late 2017. Unable to let her stay on a building site, management installed her in a high-floor suite at a neighbouring hotel with a view of the diminutive Raffles compound so she “could keep an eye on how things were progressing”.

My sneak peek earlier this week revealed that the grand dame looks lighter and brighter, still imbued with colonial grandeur but fresher and with a more sociable configuration of spaces, particularly in the lobby where the legendary Writers’ Bar has been reinstated and the ghosts of Maugham, Kipling, Conrad, Coward et al are surely overseeing proceedings, perhaps with eyebrows raised over head barman Paul Hammond’s adventurous new tipple, Eternal Youth. Clusters of seating and contemporary chandeliers in the lobby are instantly eye-catching and stripping back the accumulation of many dozens of coats of white paint on columns and woodwork gives a clear feeling of buoyancy.

The all-new La Dame de Pic restaurant at Raffles Singapore.

The front desk has been relegated to a more discreet nook in the foyer’s far reaches and Michelin-starred chef Anne-Sophie Pic’s restaurant, La Dame de Pic, conceived by New York-based Champalimaud Design, is all blush pink, rose gold and laser-cut chandeliers, replacing Raffles Grill, which always felt like a stuffy gentlemen’s club. The legendary Tiffin Room is present and correct, but its northern Indian fare has been revamped, is now served tableside as well as the classic buffet, and the décor feels more open and accessible.

I follow Champalimaud Design’s managing director Ed Bakos on his rounds as he talks of how the building’s environmental “performance” has been improved and how “transactional spaces” such as the lobby must also have “intimacy” and “elevate the spirits”. He assesses the “temperature” of the lighting in the lobby and ensures every last cushion, surface and stretch of carpet is opening day-ready.

The 115 suites have been given a new look at the Raffles Hotel.

The hotel is not just for guests of course. Raffles is its own precinct. Gunny sacks of peanuts, their shells ready to throw on the floor, and giddy pink Singapore Slings? The Long Bar has been relocated to the second floor of the encircling colonnaded arcade and given a gentle plantation-inspired makeover. The souvenir boutique is bigger and better stocked, there’s a seven-suite spa with treatments based on healing minerals, and the open-air Raffles Courtyard now has the feel of a piazza, with a chic bar and umbrella-shaded dining spaces. Celebrity chefs Alain Ducasse and Jereme Leung will open their signature restaurants during the hotel’s final reopening phase.

The 115 suites have been refreshed, teak floors pulled up and revarnished, some room styles reconfigured, and all equipped with dazzling new bathrooms and iPad technology to operate lights and services, and to summon one’s personal butler. In the old days, the regulars would quip, “When at Raffles, don’t forget to visit Singapore.” Only at a heritage hotel so indivisible from its location could such a sentiment endure.

The heritage of the Raffles Hotel is preserved outside but the interiors have been given a fresh clean look.