SEA 2014: Hotel Review Holiday Inn Express Clarke Quay
For our time in Singapore, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Clarke Quay. As a category 3 IHG property, it’s 20k points a night.
I don’t have much experience with IHG hotels (I guess I don’t have much experience with hotels generally), but this was the nicest and hippest Holiday Inn Express I’ve stayed at. I generally don’t think of “cool” when I think of Holiday Inn, but the interior was designed to be pretty funky.
The rooms were small, but functional. The outside-facing rooms have interesting slanted windows, and there were warning signs to close the shades if you were doing anything private.
The bathroom has sliding components to open up to the rest of the room, so they’re not noise-insulating at all. I don’t really understand the not-quite-separate bathroom concept in hotels. I’ve never thought to myself, “gee, I really wish I could look at my bed when I’m taking a dump”.
The fitness center was on the roof, which was decently sized. But the best part of the roof was definitely the pool. No, it’s not the Marina Bay Sands, but you can see the Marina Bay Sands from the roof, and the pool was surprisingly uncrowded whenever we used it.
Breakfast every morning was fine. But really, we only ate enough to appease our stomachs long enough to get to the real eating of the day.
The service at the hotel is limited, since it’s a Holiday Inn Express and not a full-service hotel. The location is convenient to Clarke Quay (obvi), but it’s actually a decently long walk to the nearest MRT station, which was inconvenient. I would stay here again given the right price (i.e. if it ever goes on PointsBreak), but I would choose lodging closer to the MRT in the future since this hotel isn’t anything special.
How far would you say the walk to the MRT is? Wife and I are going to Singapore in June and this hotel looks intriguing since it’s only 20K points (actually on 18K per night since we have IHG credit cards), (40% of points of what IC is) and room rate is 2/3 what IC is, so I’d say that’s a great value on points redemption. Pool looks nice as a way to cool of after day of sight-seeing. We’d like to stay at IC with our free nights from Into the Nights promo, but we’d might to better off saving them since this one is cheaper and meets our needs.
It took us about 10 minutes to walk to either MRT station, or just long enough to get sweaty. Given how expensive accommodations are in Singapore, it’s definitely a good points value, but it’s just slightly too far away from an MRT station for me to rave about the location.
We stayed there last June and the hotel was about 5 to 7 minutes walk to the MRT (either China Town or Clarke Quay, same distance, but different directions). We are fast walker, but we learned to walk slower so we didn’t get too sweaty in that awful humidity.
You must be a very fast walker! I generally didn’t walk very quickly in Singapore because it’s so hot and humid.
Thanks for all the replies. Ten minute max is not too bad considering how few points you need compared to other IHG hotels in Singapore.