In recent years, many of the hotels in Singapore that were once managed by the Park Hotel Group have largely been taken over and rebranded by other organizations, leaving Grand Park City Hall as the last one standing in their portfolio. The photos and reviews of this hotel seemed pretty decent and since there was a promotion on Trip.com back during the pandemic that included access to the club lounge, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to check this property out.
- Inclusions:
- 1-night stay in Junior Suite
- Crystal Club lounge access
- Breakfast, afternoon tea and evening cocktails (as part of club lounge access)
- Spent: SGD$170
Check-in
Stepping into the tiny lobby on level 3, guests are immediately greeted by clean, contrasting lines of black and white, as well as an intricately patterned runway of sorts that leads into Tablescape Restaurant & Bar. Thankfully, there weren’t many guests around at the time we arrived as I can imagine it’d be a tight squeeze in here otherwise. Xue Kee, the reception staff, was a pleasant young lady who assisted us with the check-in process and presented us with our key cards in a jiffy.
Room
Our room was situated on the 6th floor (out of 10 guest room floors). It is a fairly spacious accommodation that has quite a few odd angles, making it feel smaller than it actually is. There isn’t a lot of natural light either as the only window in the room was mostly facing an adjacent wall. In a little corner is a cosy living area with inviting plush seating at first glance, but upon closer inspection, there were visible stains spotted on the lighter coloured armchair.
I called up the tele-operator to request for my usual firm pillow and was offered both a contour pillow and a tatami pillow (an interesting option that was basically a tatami mat folded into a rectangle). After I tried both (which only arrived after a second call to housekeeping), I stuck with the contour pillow as the tatami one felt a little scratchy. As for the bed, it had fantastic firmness that allowed me to sleep soundly through the night. Turndown service was also available upon request.
One of the highlights of this room is the fact that you can turn your shower into a private steam room! It took my husband and I an embarrasing amount of time to figure out that we simply had to close the shower door in order to activate the system (truly a facepalm moment). However, just two minutes into it, I frantically switched the steam function off as I felt like I was suffocating, the way I did when I had my face steamed during my Pablo Blau facial.
When I first shared this with my husband, he shrugged it off as me being my usual overly sensitive self. He heroically volunteered to “sacrifice” himself for this review and try out the feature, but when it came his turn, he also switched it off before the auto-timer ended (albeit lasting longer than I did) as he also found it hard to breathe. I guess we’re just not steam room people ):
Facilities
Both the pool and gym can be found on level 4 of the property. The pool is sizeable and looks quite inviting with its deep blue waters and surrounding greenery, while the gym is really compact with barely any space to walk.
The Crystal Club lounge was originally on level 9 but as our stay happened during the pandemic, this gorgeous space was converted into a residents’ lounge for long-staying guests. The iconic bird cage structure that houses the alfresco seats never fails to pique my husband’s interest every time we pass by during our commute. It was a pity we couldn’t enjoy the lounge offerings here and to my dismay, I found out from one of the staff that they had plans to reopen this lounge two weeks later! Unfortunate timing indeed.
The alternative venue for lounge service was Tablescape Lounge on level 3 right across from the reception counters. There wasn’t a lot of space but everything did look modern and elegant.
Afternoon tea was served during two time slots: 2pm to 3.30pm and 3.30pm to 5pm. We opted for the former and had to make our booking via the e-concierge QR code. When we arrived at 2pm and seated ourselves, we observed that there was no staff stationed here to attend to guests, which was rather unprofessional given that afternoon tea service should’ve already begun. We were just mindlessly waiting until enough was enough and I decided to approach a staff.
Steve, the staff taking our order, was personable, just as he was when I chatted with him earlier during our check-in. They didn’t officially have hot chocolate on the menu but he very kindly helped to arrange for it. Afternoon tea comprised three tiers of sweets, savouries and scones. The food was pretty average, nothing particularly outstanding but I thought it was nice that the scones were slightly warm. Regrettably, refills weren’t allowed as it was limited to one set per guest (though from what I understand, they’ve since reverted to a free-flow buffet style already).
Evening cocktails were served between 5pm to 6.30pm and 6.30pm to 8pm, also requiring a booking via the e-concierge QR code. Although there was no limit to the alcoholic drinks you could order, the food items remained restricted to one set per guest. As with afternoon tea, the items were generally passable. We saw a rehash of the truffle tart from this afternoon but since it was one of the better tasting items, we didn’t mind it too much. For drinks, we ordered a mimosa and a ginger ale to go along with our food.
Given that evening cocktails left us fairly hungry, we decided to head up to the rooftop Sky Garden, an open-air event space which transforms into a barbecue grill restaurant and bar on certain nights of the week. Upon stepping out of the lift, we were immediately distracted by the fireworks going on as part of the National Day Parade rehearsal. My husband managed to find a spot with a decent view of the Marina Bay area to admire the the scene, it was splendid!
Once that concluded, we walked back to take a seat at the restaurant. As the menu only had a selection of sharing platters, I asked whether they served smaller bites here. To our delight, the staff said it was possible to order from the Tablescape Restaurant menu and they’d bring it up for us! We had a mac and cheese (a tad too oily for me), as well as a basket of fragrant truffle fries (yummy stuff) while dining under the stars and enjoying the cool evening breeze. It was a lovely ambience with the fairy lights around us, jazz music playing in the background and gentle splashing sounds from the water feature – it couldn’t get any better than this.
Indran, the staff who attended to us, made an impression as well. He was warm and approachable, chatting with us candidly after our meal. He also informed us that if it does rain, guests will be directed downstairs to Tablescape Restaurant. Besides the fireworks, this was by far the most memorable aspect of our stay ❤
Breakfast the next morning was also memorable, but not in a positive way. Despite us having lounge access, there was simply no capacity in that makeshift lounge area to accommodate all the club guests, so we were ushered to Tablescape Restaurant instead. To make matters worse, we were seated in a very compact, poorly distanced seating area right in the middle of the restaurant. Given that covid cases were on the rise again in the country then, I felt really anxious and just wanted to get breakfast over and done with. Similar to our experience at Regent Hotel, a major reason why guests would opt for club access is to avoid uncomfortable situations like this and to access better quality service and food.
On the note about better quality food, that was equally disappointing. Although breakfast was a buffet as opposed to the one-set-per-guest restriction we’ve encountered so far, many of the food options were mediocre at best, with a number of items actually tasting bland. Also, we incidentally found out later that there was the option of made-to-order eggs when we saw the table next to us receiving theirs. My husband looked at me and we both knew in that moment that this cemented our rating of 3 stars for this underwhelming experience.
My overall rating of the experience: 3 out of 5 stars. The sense that I got from this stay was that the hotel’s priority was to scrimp in order to keep itself afloat, while guest experience and satisfaction lamentably took a back seat. Understandably so given the covid climate then, but I believe there still needed to be a baseline standard to upkeep. Our room was relatively spacious but it didn’t feel that way due to the odd angles and lack of natural light. Food quality was lacking as well and having dined at Tablescape Restaurant before, I do think they’re capable of better. Also, it might be acceptable to limit guests to just one set for afternoon tea and evening canapes at this price point, but at least ensure that the items served are executed well, which was not the case here. Service proactiveness was absent for the most part, but when we did manage to get a hold of the staff, some demonstrated exemplary hospitality. My favourite part of this experience was soaking in the ambience of dining under the stars at the rooftop restaurant and watching the mesmerizing fireworks display (:
If this post helped you in some way and you’d like to buy me a coffee, I’d be incredibly grateful (:
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