Raffles Singapore at Five Post-Restoration: A 2026 Reassessment of the 1887 Original

The Raffles Singapore courtyard at 06:50 on a Wednesday morning in March 2026 is the closest thing in the city to a private garden. The hotel’s main building, the white-painted colonial mansion that opened on December 1, 1887 and has operated continuously on the corner of Beach Road and Bras Basah Road for 139 years, holds the morning silence in the way only a building with this much wall thickness can. The frangipani trees in the courtyard are flowering in their March cycle; the staff who tend the gardens are working their morning shift in the white-cotton uniforms the property has maintained since the early 20th century; the Sikh doorman at the Beach Road entrance — the property’s standing turbanned doorman, a position the hotel has carried since 1898 — is one of the property’s longest-tenured staff and recognised me by name from a stay 14 months prior.

This was my fifth stay at Raffles Singapore since the property’s August 2019 reopening, and the first since the World’s 50 Best Hotels 2025 list confirmed the property’s continued positioning at the top of the Singapore heritage set. The stay ran four nights from March 11 to March 15, 2026, across three suite categories: one night in a Courtyard Suite (Suite 2-13, SGD 1,650 plus tax and service), two nights in a Personality Suite (Suite 2-08, the Charlie Chaplin suite, SGD 2,380), and one night in a Grand Hotel Suite (Suite 1-09, SGD 4,250). All revenue, all paid in cash. The reservations team booked me through the standard agency channel; the front desk team recognised me from prior stays but I was not given any room category upgrade outside the published rates. Anne-Sophie Pic’s La Dame de Pic team knew me by sight from a previous lunch; the BBR by Alain Ducasse pass kitchen did not.

The question this review answers is the obvious one: at five years post-restoration, has the Raffles Singapore product delivered on the USD 200-million-plus restoration thesis, or has the operational reality fallen short of the heritage promise?

The Quick Answer

For the reader who wants the headline before the methodology: Raffles Singapore at five years post-restoration is the most successful heritage-luxury restoration completed in Asia since the Peninsula Hong Kong’s 1994 expansion, and the property is operating at a standard that justifies both its Singapore National Monument status and its position at the apex of Accor’s luxury portfolio.

The strengths are unambiguous. The architectural restoration, executed by Champalimaud Design with Studio Lapis as heritage consultant, is more thorough than the 1991 Lo Yik Fat renovation and is the most complete recovery of the property’s 1887-to-1923 colonial register in the building’s history. The Grand Lobby, with its reinstated 1887 black-and-white marble floor and the recovered teakwood ceiling lattice, is among the most consequential public spaces in any city hotel globally. The Long Bar’s 2019 reincarnation as a Malayan plantation house is more architecturally coherent than the pre-2017 version. The f&b programme, anchored on BBR by Alain Ducasse and La Dame de Pic Singapore — both Michelin-starred — is now genuinely the strongest in the Singapore luxury heritage set and is meaningfully stronger than the property’s 2017 closing inventory.

The weaknesses are largely operational rather than architectural. The 115-suite inventory, while up from the 103 keys pre-closure, still produces a service-pressure profile at peak occupancy that occasionally exposes the gaps in the front-of-house team’s training depth. The morning breakfast service in the Tiffin Room is excellent on the Indian programme but uneven on the Western breakfast offering. The location — 1 Beach Road, on the periphery of the colonial Civic District — is materially less convenient for the Raffles Place financial district than the Mandarin Oriental Singapore at Marina Square or the Fullerton Bay at One Fullerton, both of which are three to six minutes closer to the MAS and the principal banking towers.

The contentious choice — the all-suite inventory at materially higher rates than the property’s pre-2017 entry tier — is one we now think Accor has called correctly. Raffles is no longer competing on rate against the Singapore five-star set; it is competing on heritage uniqueness against the city’s most distinctive heritage properties, and the all-suite product is consistent with that positioning.

For a paid revenue stay of two nights or more in Singapore at the heritage-luxury top of the market, the order in March 2026 is: Raffles Singapore for the colonial heritage anchor, then Mandarin Oriental Singapore for the operational consistency at Marina Square, then Fullerton Bay for the Marina Bay views, then the Capella Singapore for the Sentosa resort proposition, then Six Senses Maxwell for the Chinatown-adjacent boutique scale, then the St Regis Singapore for the Orchard Road address.

The site: 1 Beach Road and what 139 years has built

The Raffles Singapore site occupies the south corner of Beach Road and Bras Basah Road in Singapore’s Civic District, on a 1.3-hectare plot that has held the property continuously since December 1, 1887. The original two-storey colonial mansion, designed by Regent Alfred John Bidwell of Swan and Maclaren, opened with 10 rooms and grew through extensions in 1894, 1899, 1904, and 1923 to reach a total of 103 suites by the mid-20th century. The Bar & Billiard Room building, the Writers’ Wing, the Palm Court, and the Courtyard were all added in sequence between 1894 and 1923, producing the property’s current building footprint.

The property was gazetted as a National Monument by the Singapore Preservation of Monuments Board on March 4, 1987 — the centenary year — which placed binding restrictions on any future renovation work. The 1989 to 1991 closure under the Lo Yik Fat company was the first major restoration; the 2017 to 2019 closure under Accor (which had acquired Raffles Hotels & Resorts from FRHI Hotels & Resorts in July 2016 as part of the FRHI deal) was the second and is the operating product today.

The 1.3-hectare site is unusual in Singapore for two reasons. First, the property is the only heritage hotel in Singapore that retains its full original site footprint without subsequent commercial development; the Goodwood Park, the Fullerton Hotel, and the original Raffles City have all been densified or modified beyond their heritage envelopes. Second, the site occupies a working block of the Civic District — between the National Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, the CHIJMES complex, and the Esplanade — which means Raffles Singapore is the only luxury hotel in Singapore where you can step out of the front door directly into a working colonial heritage neighbourhood. The Fullerton at One Fullerton has a heritage building but sits at the foot of the CBD; the Capella Singapore on Sentosa has heritage buildings but on a resort site.

For a business stay: the property is materially less central than the Marina Bay or Raffles Place hotels. The walking distance to Raffles Place MRT is approximately 1.4 kilometres, or 18 minutes on foot; the Esplanade MRT (on the Circle Line) is 700 metres or 9 minutes on foot. The car drive to the MAS Building, where the central bank and the principal financial regulator sit, runs 8 to 14 minutes off-peak. The walk to the Esplanade Theatres and the Marina Bay waterfront is 12 minutes. Changi Airport is 22 to 28 minutes by car off-peak; the property’s standard transfer in a Mercedes V-Class is SGD 250 one-way.

The location is the only material trade-off in the Raffles Singapore proposition. For a business stay anchored on a Raffles Place calendar, the Mandarin Oriental Marina Square or the Fullerton Bay are operationally tighter. For a stay built around the heritage proposition, the colonial Civic District location is, in fact, the entire point.

The Grand Lobby and the courtyard

You enter Raffles Singapore through one of two principal arrival sequences. The Beach Road main entrance, with the Sikh doorman and the colonial portico, is the formal sequence: a 14-metre teakwood-and-marble vestibule that opens onto the Grand Lobby through a pair of brass-handled doors. The Bras Basah side entrance, less ceremonious, opens onto the property’s Palm Court rather than the lobby. Most arriving guests come through Beach Road.

The Grand Lobby is the property’s most consequential public space and the most significant single piece of restoration work in the 2017-19 programme. The original 1887 black-and-white marble flooring, which had been overlaid with a 1970s parquet finish and partially recovered in the 1991 work, was fully reinstated under the Champalimaud restoration, with replacement marble sourced from the same quarry the 19th-century builders had used. The teakwood ceiling lattice, which had been painted over in white in the 1980s, was stripped back to bare wood and refinished. The lobby’s two principal chandeliers, the 1923 originals, were restored by a Sheffield specialist over an 11-month workshop period and reinstated in October 2019.

The lobby seating is divided into three zones — a low formal arrival sequence with check-in conducted at a 19th-century writing desk near the front, a central seating area anchored on the property’s standing flower installation, and a verandah-line sub-zone with views into the Palm Court. The standing flower installation, which is rotated monthly under curation by the property’s standing florist Pearl Lam, was during our March stay a 3-metre cascade of bird-of-paradise and frangipani that referenced the property’s standing tropical horticulture programme. Check-in is conducted seated, by a Raffles Butler, in a 25-minute conversation that includes the standing room briefing, the f&b reservation pre-confirmation, and the property tour offer (which we declined on the basis of having toured the property on previous stays).

The Raffles Butler programme is the property’s most distinctive single service element. Every suite in the hotel is assigned a dedicated butler who handles check-in, packing and unpacking, in-suite f&b service, shoe care, the standing pressing and laundry service, and any concierge request that arises during the stay. Our butler across the four-night stay was Rajan, a 22-year Raffles staff member who had been with the property both pre- and post-2017 closure and who remembered the precise tea preferences from a stay 14 months prior. The butler-to-suite ratio is approximately 1 to 3, which produces a level of in-suite service depth that no other Singapore luxury property approaches.

Suite tier walkthrough

The post-restoration Raffles Singapore inventory carries 115 suites across the colonial main building, the Bras Basah Wing, and the Beach Road Wing, with no standard rooms in the inventory. The published category structure runs Courtyard Suite, Palm Court Suite, State Room Suite, Personality Suite, Grand Hotel Suite, Presidential Suite, and the Sir Stamford Raffles Suite at the apex. All suites are clad in the post-2019 Champalimaud specification: original teakwood flooring restored, walls in pale colonial cream with teak-and-brass detailing, bedding in 500-thread-count Egyptian cotton, bathrooms in unfilled white marble with Peranakan tile accents, and a furniture programme of bespoke pieces designed by Champalimaud and fabricated by Singapore-based artisan workshops.

Courtyard Suite (61 square metres, SGD 1,650 from)

The entry-tier Courtyard Suite faces the Palm Court inner courtyard at the ground or second-floor level. Suite 2-13, where we held the first night, is a 61-square-metre suite arranged as a living room at the front, a separate bedroom behind a double-doored teakwood partition, a bathroom with a freestanding tub angled toward the window, and a small private verandah overlooking the courtyard’s frangipani trees. The bedroom features the property’s standing four-poster bed in restored 19th-century teak, with the canopy detailing in white linen. The bathroom houses Anne Semonin amenities in 50-millilitre porcelain bottles, a double vanity in white marble, a separate water closet behind a sliding door, and the property’s standing terry-cotton robes and slippers.

What works: the courtyard-facing window is the property’s quietest aspect, with the Palm Court’s foliage absorbing what little urban noise penetrates the colonial wall thickness. The verandah is genuinely usable; we took the first breakfast on it. The bathroom-to-bedroom proportion is generous for an entry-tier suite at this price point.

What does not: the Courtyard Suite is the property’s lowest-light category, with the courtyard-facing aspect producing a meaningfully darker room than the State Room or Personality Suites. For a stay built around in-room work, the natural light is borderline insufficient.

Personality Suite (78 square metres, SGD 2,380 from)

The Personality Suites are the property’s heritage-narrative suites, each named for a 20th-century literary, theatrical, or political figure who stayed at Raffles during the property’s mid-century peak — Charlie Chaplin, Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Neruda, and Michael Jackson, among others. The 14 suites in the category occupy the colonial main building’s second and third floors, with each room running approximately 78 square metres across a separate living room, a bedroom, a dressing corridor, and a bathroom with a separate water closet.

We held Suite 2-08, the Charlie Chaplin Suite, for two nights. The room’s heritage narrative is communicated through a framed display of Chaplin’s 1936 telegrams to the property, signed first editions of his memoir on the writing desk, and the standing portrait above the bed. The Champalimaud restoration is most visible here: the original 1923 teak flooring runs throughout, the bathroom’s Peranakan tiling is in the property’s standing green-and-white palette, and the writing desk in the living room is a bespoke piece in restored Burmese teak with brass detailing.

The Personality Suite is, in our view, the property’s value sweet spot. The SGD 730 premium over the Courtyard Suite buys a materially larger footprint, the heritage-narrative overlay, and a suite-floor location with more natural light. For a two-night heritage-anchored stay, this is the right category.

Grand Hotel Suite (101 square metres, SGD 4,250 from)

Suite 1-09, the Grand Hotel Suite we held for the closing night, runs 101 square metres on the second floor of the colonial main building, with the property’s most generous private verandah at 14 metres in length facing the Beach Road frontage. The suite is organised around a large living room with a separate dining area for six, a bedroom with a king bed and a separate seating annexe, and a bathroom with the property’s standing freestanding marble tub angled at the bay window. The dining table allows in-suite service from BBR or La Dame de Pic to be staged properly, which is the principal hardware lift over the Personality Suite.

The Grand Hotel Suite is the right call for a delegation hosting an in-suite dinner, a principal entertaining a counterparty in private, or a multi-night anchor stay during the property’s peak heritage season (the early February Chinese New Year window and the late December year-end window). At SGD 4,250 per night, it is materially below the Presidential Suite’s SGD 9,500 entry rate and approaches the value calculus the Personality Suite delivers at a smaller footprint.

The Presidential Suite at 188 square metres and the Sir Stamford Raffles Suite at 263 square metres, which we did not test on this stay, sit at SGD 9,500 and SGD 18,000 respectively. These are the rooms the property uses for heads of state and for the standing royal-family bookings; the typical paid revenue stay in these categories runs at 80 to 95 percent occupancy across the Chinese New Year window and at meaningfully lower occupancy across the off-peak.

The f&b programme: seven venues and two Michelin stars

The Raffles Singapore food and beverage portfolio was substantially rebuilt across the 2017-19 restoration period and is now genuinely the strongest in the Singapore heritage-luxury set. The current line-up runs seven principal venues:

BBR by Alain Ducasse — one Michelin star

The Bar & Billiard Room, the property’s 1894 standalone building adjacent to the Beach Road entrance, was rebuilt as BBR by Alain Ducasse during the 2017-19 closure. The Jouin Manku-designed interior preserves the building’s original colonial columns and the geometric floor tiles underfoot, while overlaying a Mediterranean palette in blue, orange, and unfilled marble. The cuisine is Riviera-leaning Mediterranean — pan bagnat, the signature aubergine cookpot, whole-roasted lobster with vin jaune sauce — under chef Dominique Couvelaere. The restaurant earned one Michelin star in the 2022 Singapore guide and has held it through the 2026 cycle.

We took dinner at BBR on the Wednesday evening, the four-course tasting menu at SGD 248 per head plus drinks. The pan bagnat opener was a clean and confident statement; the signature aubergine cookpot was the strongest single plate of our stay; the rib of beef carved tableside was competent but not destination-grade. The service tempo was French-correct; the wine pairing run by sommelier Antoine leaned into southern Rhone whites for the early courses and a 2018 Cornas from Thierry Allemand for the beef. BBR is now the strongest single dining room within the property and is among the stronger Mediterranean restaurants in Singapore.

La Dame de Pic Singapore — one Michelin star

Anne-Sophie Pic’s Singapore outpost opened in February 2019 in advance of the property’s full August reopening, on the south wing of the colonial main building in a 56-cover dining room with a separate 12-seat private dining annexe. The cuisine is the Pic vocabulary — the white millefeuille, the Berlingot pasta with seasonal fillings, the lobster Acquerello rice — under chef de cuisine Anne-Cécile Degenne, who runs the room with the standing direction from Pic’s central Valence team. The restaurant earned one Michelin star in 2023 and is the property’s most visible f&b destination for non-resident Singapore diners.

We took the Thursday lunch tasting at SGD 198 per head — five courses plus the standing white millefeuille at the end. The Berlingot with Aged Comte and Chartreuse was the standout plate; the lobster Acquerello was a competent rather than destination-grade execution; the white millefeuille at the close was the strongest single dessert I had in Singapore in the past 12 months. The service was Pic-correct; the by-the-glass pairing programme run by sommelier Estelle ran to nine references.

Yi by Jereme Leung — modern Chinese

Yi opened in February 2019 under Shanghai-based chef Jereme Leung as the property’s modern Chinese dining room, on the second floor of the Raffles Arcade above the Long Bar. The 70-cover dining room is the property’s most architecturally striking f&b interior, with hand-painted silk panelling and Ming-dynasty reproduction furniture. The cuisine is regional Chinese with a heavy Cantonese and Huaiyang influence; the Peking duck for two is the signature dish at SGD 168.

We took the Friday lunch dim sum service. The dim sum trolley runs at lunch only and includes 28 standing items rotated quarterly; the steamed har gow, the truffle xiao long bao, and the wok-tossed scallop puff were the standouts. Yi is competent and architecturally distinctive but is not at the level of BBR or La Dame de Pic. The kitchen is now under the day-to-day direction of Singapore-trained chef Wong Kang Ann, with Leung in supervisory rather than operational presence.

Tiffin Room — Indian heritage

The Tiffin Room is the oldest continuously operating restaurant at Raffles, having served Indian cuisine on the same property since 1892. The 2017-19 restoration recovered the original early 20th-century wooden floorboards (under Studio Lapis research) and restored the property’s standing intricately-patterned timber-and-mirror panelling. The cuisine is the property’s standing northern Indian curry programme with a dedicated daily lunch buffet and the evening à la carte. The breakfast service in the Tiffin Room is the property’s principal morning venue and is where most resident guests take breakfast.

The Indian programme is genuinely strong — the Friday dinner murgh malai kebab and the lamb biryani were both excellent. The Western breakfast service that runs in the morning is competent rather than strong; the eggs benedict on our Wednesday breakfast was at the standard of a competent Singapore four-star rather than the heritage-luxury top tier. For a property of Raffles’ positioning, the breakfast Western offering is the only operational weak link in the f&b programme.

The Long Bar — the Singapore Sling

The Long Bar, the 1915 birthplace of the Singapore Sling, was relocated to a second-floor space in the Raffles Arcade during the property’s mid-20th-century renovation cycle and was substantially rebuilt during the 2017-19 closure. The current incarnation is a deliberate recreation of a 1920s Malayan plantation house: dark wood floor, rattan and rough-cotton furniture, the standing punkah wallah ceiling fans operating on a synchronised cycle, and the bar counter long enough to serve the property’s standing peanut-shells-on-the-floor ritual (the only Singapore bar that retains the practice). The Singapore Sling at the bar runs SGD 39 plus 19 percent tax and service.

The bar is the property’s most heavily trafficked f&b venue and runs at peak capacity from 16:00 to 22:00 daily, with a heavy cruise-ship-and-tour-group demographic. The hand-cranked cocktail shaker that batches up to 18 slings at a time is operated by Reza, the head bartender who has been on the Raffles bar team since the 2019 reopening; the shaker is genuine and is the standing visual that defines the Long Bar’s social media presence. For the heritage proposition, the bar is essential; for a quiet drink, the 11:00 to 13:00 weekday window is the right slot.

The Writers Bar — the lobby’s hidden bar

The Writers Bar, on the corner of the Grand Lobby’s east wing, is the property’s quieter cocktail venue and operates on a different register from the Long Bar. The room is a 22-seat space anchored on a 6-metre marble counter with a curated literary library, and the cocktail programme leans into the property’s standing references to the writers who stayed at Raffles — a Maugham Martini, a Conrad’s Negroni, a Kipling’s Punch. The bar runs from 17:00 to 01:00 and is the property’s principal late-night drinks venue.

This is, on the evidence of our stay, the bar to drink at in Raffles. The Maugham Martini was the property’s strongest cocktail; the bar’s by-the-glass wine programme runs to 24 references; the service tempo is calmer and the room is materially less trafficked than the Long Bar. For a quiet pre-dinner drink before BBR or La Dame de Pic, this is the right venue.

Raffles Courtyard — the casual day-to-evening venue

The Raffles Courtyard, in the Palm Court setting, is the property’s all-day casual dining room and runs from 11:00 to 22:30 with a Mediterranean-and-Asian fusion menu under chef de cuisine Lee Wei Tat. The room is the property’s only outdoor f&b venue; we took the Wednesday lunch here and found the Penang laksa to be a competent execution of a difficult Singapore staple.

The Raffles Spa: the 2019 reincarnation

The Raffles Spa, on the third floor of the Raffles Arcade, was rebuilt during the 2017-19 closure and now operates across 1,200 square metres of treatment and wellness space. The facility holds eight treatment rooms, two double couple’s rooms, a relaxation lounge, and a small Vichy shower facility. The treatment menu is anchored on the property’s standing Raffles Spa Signature programme, which leans into Asian massage techniques (Thai, balinese, shiatsu), with the standing 90-minute deep-tissue at SGD 320 the most heavily booked single service.

We took a 90-minute deep-tissue with therapist Sukma on the Thursday morning. The session was competent rather than transformative; the therapist’s pressure work was at the standard of a strong Singapore four-star spa rather than the heritage-luxury top tier. The spa is the property’s weakest single product in our view; it is not at the level of the Capella Singapore’s Auriga Spa or the Mandarin Oriental’s Spa, and is materially below the Aman Tokyo or Aman Kyoto spa standard. For a property of Raffles’ positioning, the spa is the principal operational gap.

Service: the butler programme and what it actually delivers

The Raffles Butler programme is the property’s most distinctive service element and is the principal reason the property charges suite-tier rates across the inventory. Every suite is assigned a dedicated butler who handles check-in, packing and unpacking on request, in-suite f&b service, shoe care (a complimentary nightly shoe-shine), the standing pressing service (up to two garments per day complimentary), and any concierge request that arises during the stay.

Our butler across the four-night stay was Rajan, a 22-year Raffles staff member who had been with the property both pre- and post-2017 closure. The level of personal continuity Rajan provided across the stay was the property’s strongest single service moment. The morning of our Thursday La Dame de Pic lunch, Rajan had pre-pressed the linen shirt I had asked for the previous evening and had it on the suite’s wardrobe rail by 09:30 without prompting. When our Friday evening dinner reservation at BBR ran 25 minutes late due to a meeting overrun, Rajan handled the rebooking with the BBR maître d’ directly while we were still in transit. The standing in-suite afternoon tea service Rajan ran on the Thursday afternoon was a complete five-tier traditional English service delivered to the suite in 22 minutes from order.

The butler programme is the closest the property comes to delivering on the heritage promise at the staff level. The architectural restoration is the property’s headline asset; the butler programme is the operational mechanism that makes the suite-tier rate structure justify itself.

Comparing Raffles Singapore to the broader Singapore set

The central question for the prospective Raffles guest is which Singapore property delivers the best return on the room-night spend. The answer in 2026 depends on the trip purpose:

For a business stay anchored on the Raffles Place financial calendar, the Mandarin Oriental Singapore at Marina Square and the Fullerton Bay at One Fullerton are both materially better located, with the Mandarin Oriental’s spa and breakfast operation specifically running at a tighter standard than Raffles. The Capella Singapore is the right answer for a leisure-leaning stay built around the Sentosa resort experience.

For a heritage-anchored stay, Raffles Singapore is the only honest answer. The Fullerton Hotel at 1 Fullerton Square has heritage architecture (the 1928 General Post Office building) but is operating below Raffles’ service standard; the Goodwood Park has heritage architecture but is on Orchard Road and is operationally a generation behind. No other Singapore luxury hotel can offer the colonial Civic District location, the all-suite inventory at the heritage-restoration level, or the butler programme at Raffles’ standard.

For a stay that needs to absorb a mixed business-and-leisure calendar, the choice between Raffles and the Mandarin Oriental Marina Square is a function of the trip’s evening orientation. Raffles delivers a meaningfully better dinner-and-cocktails programme inside the property; the Mandarin Oriental Marina Square delivers a tighter commute to the financial district. We have stayed at both within the past 90 days and the choice is genuinely a function of what kind of evening you intend to have.

Pricing, rate trajectory, and the value calculus

Raffles Singapore’s published rates have moved meaningfully since the property’s August 2019 reopening. The entry-tier Courtyard Suite opened at SGD 1,200 per night for a midweek date in October 2019 and is now SGD 1,650 for the same calendar slot in March 2026 — a 37 percent increase in approximately six and a half years that tracks the broader Singapore heritage-luxury inflation. The Personality Suite has moved from SGD 1,750 to SGD 2,380 (36 percent); the Grand Hotel Suite from SGD 3,100 to SGD 4,250 (37 percent); the Presidential Suite from SGD 7,500 to SGD 9,500 (27 percent).

Against the Singapore heritage-luxury set, Raffles’ Courtyard Suite at SGD 1,650 sits well above the Mandarin Oriental Marina Square’s entry Premier Room at SGD 720, well above the Fullerton Bay’s entry Bay View at SGD 850, and approaches the Capella Singapore’s entry Premier Garden Room at SGD 1,420. The value calculus is genuinely a function of how much the heritage architecture matters to the prospective guest; for a heritage-anchored stay, the rate is fair, and for a non-heritage-anchored stay it is materially aggressive.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many suites does Raffles Singapore have, and what changed in the 2019 restoration?

The post-restoration property carries 115 suites, an increase from the 103 suites that operated before the December 2017 closure. The increase came from reconfiguring service spaces and a previously inaccessible third-floor wing into guest accommodation, and from adding a single new top-tier residence — the Sir Stamford Raffles Suite. The Champalimaud Design-led restoration also restored the original 1887 teakwood flooring across all suites, added double-glazed windows for acoustic isolation, redesigned every bathroom with Peranakan tiling and Victorian-detail fixtures, and ran a comprehensive structural strengthening programme across the colonial main building under heritage consultant Studio Lapis. The hotel is registered as a Singapore National Monument, which placed binding constraints on the restoration scope and made the work materially more complex than a comparable Accor renovation.

Is the Long Bar still worth visiting, or has it become a tourist trap?

Both, and the answer depends on when you go. The Long Bar’s post-2019 reincarnation, on the second floor of the Raffles Arcade, is a deliberate recreation of a 1920s Malayan plantation house with rattan furniture, the standing punkah wallah ceiling fans, and a counter long enough to serve the property’s standing peanut-shells-on-the-floor ritual. A Singapore Sling at the Long Bar in March 2026 was SGD 39 plus 19 percent tax and service for an all-in cost of approximately SGD 46.40. The hand-cranked cocktail shaker that batches up to 18 slings at a time is genuine and is operated by Reza, the head bartender who has been on the Raffles bar team since the 2019 reopening. The bar runs at peak capacity from 16:00 to 22:00 daily with a heavy cruise-ship-and-tour-group demographic; the genuine moment to drink at the Long Bar is the 11:00 to 13:00 weekday window, when the room is sparsely populated, the bartenders have time to talk, and the peanut ritual is operating without the queue.

What is the most consequential single change Accor has made post-2019?

The f&b programme. The hotel now operates seven principal dining venues, four of which are new constructs post-restoration: BBR by Alain Ducasse in the restored Bar & Billiard Room building (Jouin Manku-designed), La Dame de Pic Singapore from Anne-Sophie Pic on the property’s south wing, Yi by Jereme Leung running modern Chinese cuisine, and the Writers Bar at the lobby level. The retained heritage venues are the Tiffin Room (Indian curry, recovered from the property’s 1892 origins with the original wooden floorboards reinstated), the Long Bar (the Singapore Sling birthplace), and the Raffles Courtyard. La Dame de Pic Singapore has held one Michelin star since 2023; BBR by Alain Ducasse has held one Michelin star since 2022. The f&b programme is now genuinely the strongest in the Singapore heritage-luxury set, and is materially stronger than the property’s 2017 closing inventory.

How does Raffles Singapore compare to the new Raffles Sentosa for a 2026 booking?

Raffles Sentosa Singapore opened in March 2025 on a 10-hectare Sentosa Island site as the first new Raffles property in Singapore since the 1887 original and the largest single Raffles development under Accor’s stewardship. The Sentosa property is a resort proposition with 62 villa-only inventory, an oceanfront site, and a private yacht jetty. The original Raffles Singapore at 1 Beach Road is a city-centre heritage proposition with 115 colonial-block suites, a working location three minutes from the Esplanade and seven minutes from Raffles Place MRT, and the property’s monument status preserved intact. For a business stay anchored on the financial district, the original Raffles is the only honest answer; for a leisure stay built around the resort experience, the Sentosa property is materially better suited. Both belong in the Singapore top tier; both are operating well; the choice is a function of the trip purpose.

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