Singapore hotel review: What Marina Bay Sands is like post-Covid

Everybody’s going by way of adjustments and this iconic hotel is no completely different.

I hate to trigger alarm, however there’s all types of black magic wizardry taking place at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands. 

“After all,”  you may say. “What do you anticipate from an architectural and engineering marvel with a huge infinity pool which holds 1.4 million litres of water 200 metres from the bottom?” 

It isn’t the hotel’s notorious infinity pool that has me awestruck nevertheless, it’s the truth that I’m standing in Marina Bay Sands’ spectacular lobby – an area visited by 45 million folks a 12 months pre-covid, a spot so busy that the final time I used to be right here, I ricocheted off different visitors like a pinball – and there’s hardly anybody round. 

It’s magic alright, Daybreak Wang, the property’s affiliate director of communications, tells me. It’s the magic of expertise. 

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Marina Bay Sands 2021

Travelling to Singapore nowadays is slightly completely different to how we keep in mind it and after a slew of paperwork and testing (try my Singapore Airways VTL story for particulars), the ultimate hurdle is quarantine, or in Singapore’s case, hotel room isolation for a number of hours till your on-arrival check at Changi Airport clears.

Fortunately, I’m ‘compelled’ to isolate in a spectacular degree 47 suite overlooking town, whereas I eat my physique weight in native dishes from the in-room eating cart and examine what’s new with the hotel. I’m cleared 4 hours later and as soon as I electronic mail the notification to Wang, I’m free to go away my room. 

In some ways, Marina Bay Sands is nonetheless the identical luxurious hotel everyone knows and love. Boasting over 900 rooms, a on line casino, all kinds of big-name eating places from Tetsuya Wakuda, Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck and Daniel Boulud and The Shoppes, a large-scale luxurious shopping center full with canals, gondolas and a crystalline ‘floating Louis Vuitton Island Maison, you could possibly spend your total vacation on the hotel alone. Which is virtually precisely what I did.

The great thing about automation

During the last 20 months, Marina Bay Sands has been reinvesting closely within the property to welcome again worldwide visitors. One of many first cabs off the rank was the implementation of the GTRIPP app, a first-in-industry staggered hotel check-in system which permits visitors contactless check-in previous to arrival (therefore the near-empty lobby). 

It’s up in Sands Skypark, the place 700 bushes and palms body the enduring infinity pool (massive sufficient to carry three soccer fields) nevertheless, that the tech actually comes into its personal.

Gone are the times of making an attempt to swim previous limitless photograph shoots, changed with an SMS queue system which lets you register your curiosity to make use of the pool (in addition to the Banyan Tree Health Membership) and offers real-time updates by way of SMS notification to assist  visitors keep away from queues and minimise contact with others.

Visitors can solely ebook in for one 75-minute session per day (15-minute cleans are interspersed between swim periods). 

I make my reserving for 6am to look at the dawn and for 45 minutes I’ve the pool totally to myself. 

Cleansing 

On this post-Covid world, cleansing is the subsequent massive factor and Marina Bay Sands isn’t doing something by halves, using the newest electrostatic spray expertise (one thing known as a Lufter EA-X3 misting machine) to sanitise every room earlier than coming into and deep-cleaning it. 

It doesn’t finish there after all; together with an elevated concentrate on disinfecting high-touch surfaces, hospital-grade HEPA filters to wash the air, contactless ordering and supply of product, and the standard masks and bodily distancing necessities, the hotel is an SG Clear licensed and Bureau Veritas SafeGuard Hygiene and Security Label accredited venue. 

What’s new at Marina Bay Sands? 

Some issues at Marina Bay Sands ought to by no means be missed and for that cause I take pleasure in a steak, grilled over charcoal and apple wooden, at CUT by Wolfgang Puck, in addition to what could possibly be the world’s greatest therapeutic massage on the Banyan Tree Spa (go for the 90-minute Balinese therapeutic massage if you happen to can).

Favourites depend for lots, however there’s loads of new and thrilling developments popping up across the hotel. New shops have been added to The Shoppes, together with the world’s first floating Apple retailer, eateries Wakuda Singapore and Roberta’s Pizza will make their debut in early 2022, and Marina Bay Sands visitors can take pleasure in a superb number of free on-site excursions, equivalent to a sustainability tour launched earlier this 12 months (enjoyable reality: over 60,000 litres of condensate water collected from air-con is recycled each day). 

Better of all, Australian visitors can now select from two hotel gives and revel in a set of perks throughout the resort. Try Book Direct and Save and Reimagine packages for particulars. 

The author was a visitor of Singapore Airways and Marina Bay Sands.

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