Marina Bay Sands (MBS), Singapore

I had a complimentary stay at MBS thanks to my mum’s friend, but unfortunately I left concluding that MBS is a hotel that’s not worth paying for.

The room itself is nice enough – we added an extra bed as there were 3 of us – it’s very spacious as the space from the door to room is quite long. Unfortunately I’m not one to appreciate space in a room – as long as there’s enough space for everyone to move around and put the luggage, I’m ok with a cosy room. So many of the people staying at MBS are there for the casinos anyway and have little need for such a big room.

Bear in mind also that this room we have goes for about $400 per person per night – not cheap hor! There wasn’t even any view to speak of from our balcony – the Singapore Flyer was not visible from where we were, and the Singapore River was on side of the rooms across the corridor.

At least they give TWG tea I suppose?

The bathroom was nice enough, but I felt it was unnecessarily big and overly spacious, with slightly poor design – there was nowhere to hang the hand towels from.

The room’s design was really something I had to quibble with.

Take for example the shower stall. It was large enough to put a bathtub, yet there was no tub – who pays $400 a night (and no breakfast included) for a room without a tub?

Moreover, the glass panel seen above didn’t extend far enough to prevent water from splashing out when showering. The only way to mitigate that is to angle the showerhead towards the wall – but then you’ll be uncomfortably close to the wall and the ledge for toiletries.

There also was only one immovable showerhead – any hotel which doesn’t have a detachable showerhead gets an automatic strikeout from me, as I like being being able to hold it in my hand, plus it costs next to nothing for the hotel to have such a feature!

The poor design of the room also extends to the location of power outlets – I think the below exemplifies it well. How dangerous to have the wire stretching across the sole passage to the toilet, and how awkward that the wire was just barely long enough to reach the mirror! There were no power outlets for hairdryers in the bathroom, and the mirror you see in below was the ONLY mirror outside the bathroom – most 4 star hotels have at least one more at the alcove (seen to the right below) where the minibar and food are located.

As said, I wouldn’t recommend any tourists to stay at MBS unless it’s free, they really want to gamble or they’re ok with the price they’re paying despite the various inadequacies of the room.