Drifting Clouds 片雲の風

After months of lockdown, Singapore opened up some hotels to staycations by local visitors in early July. It had been 6 months since we’d gotten out of the house, the kids were on school holiday, and Capella Singapore of Trump-Kim summit fame had a pretty decent deal (20% off, free breakfast, late checkout and a $100 dining credit), so we decided to try it out. Make no mistake, this was still not a cheap stay, but we did also “save” on the cost of return flights for four people, or at least that’s how we justified it to ourselves!

This is not going to be a review of Capella: the place has been around for over ten years, so that’s been done to death. Instead, I’m going to focus on what staycations in Phase 2 Singapore are like when COVID-19 still stalks the streets.

Arrival

Luxury hotels put a lot of effort into making check-in as smooth as possible. COVID bureaucracy, unfortunately, does not. On arrival, every adult needs to do the SafeEntry QR scan before entering, get their temperature measured, fill out a lengthy health declaration form that requests everything from your reason of stay to your employer’s contact details, and only then to you get the to the normal hotel registration with NRICs, credit cards etc. No big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it did take a good 20 minutes and it’s always tedious to repeat the same info over and over — would it be hard to, say, extend SafeEntry to hotel stays?

In normal times, Capella serves its guests iced tea on arrival. These are not normal times, so we got sealed tetrapaks of “ecofriendly” water instead. The kids were less than impressed, and entertained themselves by watching a cockroach crawl up the wall.

Room

Our room was otherwise refreshingly normal, and the kids were relieved to hear you don’t even need to wear masks inside. However, all in-room snacks and alcohol had disappeared. The minibar was still stocked, but only with 4 cans of Coke and some fruit juice. I’m not sure if this is because of COVID, regular Capella policy, or just some reopening glitch. A welcome gift in the form of shrink-wrapped cookies was delivered, but there was no sign of the usual fruit basket.

Facilities

All pools were open, but with capacity controls: for example, 16 guests max in the family pool, with 2-hour stays. Enforcement appeared to be mostly on an honour basis, and in any case we only saw one other family using it during our stay. The gym was open, but access was gated via the (also open) spa. The business centre was unsurprisingly closed. Elevators, the front desk, and other places with even a remote possibility of crowding were annotated with big social distancing stickers on the floor.

Capella’s complimentary lounge, the Living Room, was open but again with capacity controls, so we had to call ahead to book. On arrival, heads were counted to make sure they were within limits (yes, barely), then we were guided to a table and presented with a fixed set of snacks, plus coffee/tea/soft drinks made to order.

Interestingly enough, while most guests were couples or families like us, there were a few Mandarin-speaking solo travellers in business wear. The Singapore-China Green Lane in action, perhaps?

Dining

Capella has two restaurants and a bar, all of which were open. However, since in-house dining charges like a wounded bull ($38++ for nasi goreng, anyone?), we opted to eat our meals on the Sentosa beachfront, which isn’t cheap either, but there are many 1-for-1 deals to dull the pain. (Pro tip: with the 1:1 pizzas at Trapizza Mon-Fri, you can feed a family of four for $22++.)

For the breakfast, we had to make an advance reservation for one of two time slots (7-8:30, 9-10:30 AM), which prevented table use and allowed a half-hour deep clean between guests. Instead of a regular buffet, which isn’t allowed under COVID rules, we had a choice of one of three set meals and/or a selection of “free flow” made to order items on the side, all brought to your table. The net effect was a bit like eating dim sum/yum cha, with trays of pastries and trolleys of juice floating past. At a fairly small and intimate place like Capella this worked very nicely, but I do wonder how large hotels with their massive champagne brunch spreads will convert to this new format. One more plus for Capella’s The Knolls: there’s plenty of spaced-out, airy and shady outdoor seating. Your average city hotel will struggle with this too.

Activities

Capella offers a wide-range of free “cultural” activities like Peranakan painting and brown sugar bubble tea making. These operated normally, except that everybody involved — including us — was masked up. Mmm, just look at that frothy mug of diabetes in a cup!

Crowding & staffing

We visited on a regular non-school-holiday weekday, and both the hotel and Sentosa were pretty quiet. Apparently this is set to change once the holidays start, and Capella is already booked full (!) on July 23rd, although I imagine they’re also operating at reduced capacity.

One thing which soon became clear is that the hotel appeared to be somewhat understaffed. The front desk promised to call regarding an activity booking but didn’t, it was 9 PM by the time turndown service was offered, a late night snack attack room service order never showed up, we were asked for our newspaper selection but it wasn’t delivered, etc — none of these big deals, but not what you’d expect at this price point. Did they underestimate the demand, or do they have staff stuck overseas? If it’s like this during a quiet weekday, next week is going to be a mess.

Overall verdict

Definitely worth it. Capella’s terraced pools are the closest you’re going to get to Bali in Singapore (just try to ignore the oil refinery flares in the background), and it’s closer to our home than Changi Airport. The COVID limits were reasonable and the adaptations well thought out. We also try to avoid busy indoor spaces (19x risk compared to the outdoors!), so Sentosa is definitely the place to be: it’s much nicer now without the usual crowds, and we really appreciated the chance to see some greenery, wide open beaches and lots of airy outdoor eating options.

It was not so nice to see some groups on the beach with way more than 5 people and not a mask in sight. There was enough space that we could steer clear, but here’s hoping these troglodytes don’t ruin it for everybody else again.