Swissôtel The Stamford has been a fixture of the Singapore skyline since 1986, and at 226 meters it remains one of Southeast Asia’s tallest hotels. I spent two hosted nights up in the higher reaches of it, and here’s how it went down.
The view does the talking
My room was on the 42nd floor, and the first thing I did was walk straight to the window. Singapore unspooled below, with an uninterrupted view of Marina Bay Sands and the waterfront beyond.
A room with a balcony
The room had a balcony, with a door that opens and a slice of outdoor air you can step into.
High-rise hotels almost never give you an operable window, let alone a private terrace. To stand outside, so many floors up, with the warm Singapore evening on your skin and the skyline humming below, is a small luxury.
The room itself is understated in the best Swiss way — teak accents, soft grays, Pürovel amenities. It’s the product of a multi-million-dollar, three-phase renovation that reworked all 1,252 rooms in partnership with design firm Wilson Associates.
Vitality rooms
Worth flagging for anyone booking: the hotel has six Vitality Rooms, tucked between the 43rd and 48th floors. I stayed in a premier room and was perfectly happy, but the vitality concept is a genuine curiosity. These were the first of their kind in Singapore, built on Swissôtel’s longstanding idea that you should be able to keep your wellbeing on the road as easily as you do at home — circadian lighting that shifts with your body clock, an in-room yoga station, a “wellness wall” with cable pulls and guided workouts on a digital display, and a minibar stocked with juices instead of chocolate bars.
Level 65: the lounge in the sky
Our stay included access to the executive lounge, Level 65, and this turned out to be one of the trip’s quiet highlights. The lounge wraps in a full circle around the 65th floor, which means the skyline follows you from your morning eggs to your evening drink — there is no bad seat.
Breakfast up there, with the city waking up beneath you, is a great way start to the day. Through the afternoon there are refreshments and quiet corners to work or read; come golden hour, the bar opens and you can nurse a drink while the sun drops behind the towers. There’s even a table-tennis table and gym equipment for the more energetic, though I’ll confess I stuck firmly to the “good book and a comfortable chair” school of vitality.
The spa that deserves its own afternoon
One floor of the complex is given over to Willow Stream Spa, and it is enormous — 23 treatment rooms, couple suites with private Jacuzzis, hot and cool plunge pools, steam rooms, saunas and relaxation lounges. It’s been named among the region’s best, and it’s the kind of facility one should budget real time for rather than squeezing in between check-out and a flight.
On that note, my spa treatment with therapist Kelly and corresponding downtime was sorely needed and deeply appreciated.
Dinner at SKAI, 70 floors up
The stay’s culinary peak — literally — was dinner at SKAI on the 70th floor. If you think the view from the rooms is good, wait until you’re eating dinner with the entire city glittering through floor-to-ceiling glass.
I’m vegan and I don’t drink, two facts that can quietly deflate a fine-dining evening. Not here. The team took it entirely in stride, and my main — Hispi cabbage with ginger, apple and hazelnut — was the opposite of the sad afterthought vegans so often get handed. It was delicious, textured, properly composed. My alcohol-free requests were met with the same warmth as any wine order.
The restaurant styles itself a refined-but-lively contemporary grill, produce-driven with a respectful tribute to Japanese ingredients, under Executive Chef Enver Can Gumus. My dining partner went the full tasting-menu route and was every bit as delighted. The kitchen clearly knows how to please both ends of the table at once. Between the food, the service and that skyline, it’s a hard evening to top.
The farm on the roof
The thread tying the food back to the building is one I loved: Swissôtel The Stamford runs what it calls the industry’s first urban aquaponics farm, right on-site, where fish and vegetables are grown together in a closed, pesticide-free loop. The hotel’s restaurants source from it. Knowing that some of what reaches the plate traveled a few floors rather than a few thousand kilometers adds something genuine to the “sustainable dining” claim so many hotels make and so few can prove.
Getting there, and getting around
Practically, the location is hard to beat: Swissôtel sits directly above City Hall MRT, connected to the Raffles City mall — and when you fancy the postcard version of Singapore up close, the Marina Bay waterfront is just a stone’s throw away.
Why it works as a stay
Swissôtel’s location puts you on top of an MRT interchange and a shopping mall, with the CBD, the museums and the bay all walkable — you rarely need a taxi. The high floors and balconies mean the view is baked into the room rate rather than reserved for a rooftop bar. Lounge access, if you can get it, effectively folds breakfast, all-day refreshments and evening drinks into one perch. And with seven restaurants and bars, a full-size spa, gorgeous pools, an irresistible breakfast spread, and comprehensive gym facilities, you could not leave the building for two days and still eat and unwind well.
For a business trip, a long weekend jaunt or a stopover you want to actually enjoy, it does the job on all counts.
The writer’s stay was hosted by Swissôtel The Stamford, Singapore.