The hotel looks old on the outside but the furniture and fixtures were well looked after. I booked the hotel through Agoda.com and received a 50% discount on price. Additionally, the staff on duty was kind enough to upgrade my deluxe room to a suite - which is a great bonus for me.

The suite room comes with a very nifty master control panel which has buttons to control all the electronic equipment in the suite. I find that rather cool :) However, there is a construction site beside the building which is quite noisy during the day.

The hotel is also very near to the red light district, but it is also near to Singapore's food heaven.

Overall, I find the hotel okay but with the discount and the upgrade, it provides great value for money.

What makes this hotel very good is the staff. They were friendly and helpful. This is an overpriced hotel if one pays the advertised rate ... but given that Singapore is an expensive city when one pays the rate charged on the hotel special deals for booking sites the level of expence drops to a normal price for this sort of hotel.

Sadly the helpful staff apologised for the over the top price for internet access.

Given some of the other reviews, yes the rooms were a tad tired, but being British I am used to this sort of tiredness in hotels which have been partially updated. The TV options were poor quality dross in both mechanical quality and content.

The swimming pool was small but clean. There are two excellent shopping centres nearby should you need anything. The pick up joint did not seem to be operating or was not at all intrusive when I stopped there.

Yes the quality of the staff is higher than the physical facilities, but this hotel is not the near disaster some other reviews suggest.

Stayed just the 1 night but made enough observations that this hotel is in need of a thorough update. There were 3 elevators but only 2 were working. Buttons in the elevators were cracking. We needed to push the security card into the reader real slow before the elevator is able to recognize the card. Elevators are small and if there are tour groups, you can end up waiting quite a bit for the elevators.

We got a room on the 12F, a non-smoking floor. However, it smelled bad upon entering the room. Not sure which is worse - a foul smelling room or a smoking room. However, on the plus side, the room was not too bad i.e. rather spacious, relatively comfortable and surroundings were not noisy. However, bathroom had no ventilation so it fogged up real quick. Other items in the room were dated e.g. buttons for the air-conditioning, the music and the lights.

The area around the hotel was also dodgy. The hotel is has an adjoining shopping mall that comprises mostly drinking holes but I do not mean your respectable pubs. You cannot see what is going on from the outside of these drinking hotels and there are men standing by the doors - usually a sign that other than alcohol, there are other types of activities going on. Hard to explain if you have family or kids in tow.

If you are driving, do be very careful coming down the steep driveway. The end of the steep slope that joins the carpark can damage your car if you are not careful.

Having said the above, I will give it points for location (it is about 10 to 15 mins from the airport), and worth considering if you need a reasonably priced hotel but do not need to be in the city. There are many good local eateries around the hotel and a good shopping mall across the road. If you need a place to sleep for a night or two, and are travelling as a single or couple, it is an acceptable place but only because of the reasonable price.

-helpful staff
-old building, but the bed is ok
-near to bus station
-quite far from (orchard)
-quite expensive
-nice breakfast (love the bacon)