How to stand out in a sea of choice.
Singapore is awash with hotels. That level of choice means your hotel short list will be long. In the past, we’ve stayed at the Oasia Downtown (First stay: outstanding, second stay: not so good) and the uber-lux Capella on Sentosa Island. I have no idea how we ended up shortlisting the Pan Pacific, but whatever went through our minds earlier this year led us to an almost perfect hotel.
How much did it cost to stay here?
It cost us £2,386.20 for a five-night stay, from Tuesday to Sunday, in a Premier Suite. That’s an average of £477 per night.
The price included breakfast, access to the executive lounge (which serves breakfast, afternoon tea, and dinner), free self-parking, and Wi-Fi. The suites also feature a complimentary mini-bar, replenished daily.
This was our first stay at this hotel, but not our first visit. On a previous trip to Singapore, we travelled to the Pan Pacific to dine at the excellent Rang Mahal.
Sadly, the restaurant closed down the week before we arrived, although we were told it is expected to relocate elsewhere in the city. That closure was so recent that signs across the hotel will still point you towards the now-empty space.
Earning Avios from this stay.
We booked this stay via Avios Hotels, which earned us just over 47,000 points. That’s at an increased rate of 20 points per £1, due to a promotion that was in effect at the time.
You would normally earn 15 points per £, which is still a decent haul of points. Note: Our stay was in August 2025, and these points were in our account at the end of September. There’s no long wait around for points.
If you’re not earning points via hotel bookings, then do have a read of my guide to using Avios Hotels. It is by far the easiest and one of the most generous ways to earn points on something that you would typically not.
You can, of course, earn Avios through booking direct with brands (at a much lower rate) or through aggregators. For some brands, like Hilton, you can double dip, earning Avios via the shopping portal, and then points via the Hilton Honors scheme (which you can then convert to Avios).
Where is the Pan Pacific located?
We chose this hotel because of its excellent location.
Three major malls are within walking distance (you can access two of them without even setting foot on the street). The malls are so well connected that it’s sometimes impossible to work out where you are.
The trick is to pick a landmark (we chose the excellent Don Don Donki supermarket) that you can get back to, which is then close enough to the hotel to find your way home from there. If this sounds like overkill, you haven’t been lost in a Singaporean mall before.
The Gardens On The Bay is a twenty-minute walk, as is Merlion Park. The award-winning Changi airport is twenty minutes away in a taxi. That’s often voted the best airport in the World, swapping places occasionally with Doha, and it’s the only airport that we ever look forward to travelling through.
It’s also a short walk to the nearest metro (MRT) station. Public transportation in Singapore is outstanding, and you can easily reach most parts of the city for a relatively low cost. The metro is also incredibly safe, well signposted and just a joy to use.
Check in at the Pan Pacific
We arrived at the hotel just after 11 pm, which meant a reception area that was eerily deserted and no check-in line. You’d like to think that made the check-in process quick, but unfortunately, it wasn’t. Long, meandering, boring check-ins are the bane of my life, and this one was painful.
Something to do with systems updating meant we had to provide some of our personal details again. We were given a detailed welcome letter, and then talked through each point on it.
I understand that hotels have an inherent fear of guests not being informed about everything, but I am able to read.
Eventually, we made our way up to our room. There are two banks of elevators: one catering to the lower floors, where the elevator is located inside the building, and one on the outside of the building that takes you to the upper floors. More on these elevators later.
Our room at the Pan Pacific
Our suite was impressive, both in terms of size and the quality of its furnishings.
There’s a main bathroom and a guest bathroom, as well as a large living area that features a big dining room table and a comfortable sofa.
The latter is a rarity in a suite. You’ll often end up with a hard, two-person sofa, whereas this room has a four-person, slightly curved sofa (think: banana-shaped) that is a joy to sit on or lie on. There’s also a single, wide guest seat. It was a joy sitting in this living room.
The bedroom is big, with a super king-sized bed. It had an incredibly comfy mattress, a plethora of lighting options, plug sockets and bedside tables.
In front of the bed is the second TV in the suite, another ultra-large screen that we used a few times to watch movies at the end of the day.
Beyond the bedroom is a smaller room that serves as a dressing area, with cupboard space for storing cases and clothes. That leads through to the bathroom, which is also well-sized and highly functional.
The walls are mostly made of dark wood, with numerous mirrors dotted around. Some feature walls have lighter colours to break things up. There are acres of lighting, which means the room doesn’t seem too dark, but it also means lots and lots of light switches.
The living room and the bedroom feature full-size glazed walls that overlook the pool area. These windows have two sets of blinds: a day blind for letting some light in but retaining some privacy, and a nighttime blind that blocks everything. Switches operate them on the walls.
In the living room, there’s a unit that contains a Nespresso machine (the corporate type, with the discs rather than the pods) and a fancy kettle that allows you to select the desired water temperature.
There’s a mini-bar, which is completely free if you’re in a suite. The contents are Western-friendly: Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, sparkling and non-carbonated water. There are two of each drink. A single alcohol option exists: two cans of Tiger beer. Drinks are replenished daily.
There’s also an impressive collection of glasses and cups stored in a glass-fronted cupboard, suitable for tea (accompanied by a beautiful teapot) or alcoholic drinks.
Let there be light-switches
Let’s talk about light switches. Here’s one of the banks of switches in the suite (complete with a power socket and USBs)
I’m a big fan of lighting, my home is filled with Hue lights, plugs and buttons. In hotels, lighting can make a big difference in a room, but the challenge is how to turn the mutlitude of lights on and off? Well-labelled buttons can help, but even then, things don’t continuously operate as you would expect.
The myriad of wires and buttons means that bedtime requires more clicking than a Jersey Boys musical. Or even worse, you try to sneak out for an early morning gym session and end up turning all the lights on in the room, waking your wife.
Someone once said, “Bring me solutions, not just problems”. Instead of individual switches for each light, have three switches for “moods”. Off, bedtime and bright for the bedroom. Off, relaxed and bright for the living room. Thank you for coming to my TED talk on light switches.
The room did have a lot of power options, with UK/Singapore style plugs, USB-A’s and international sockets.
The bathroom
This is a spacious bathroom with a separate bath and shower. As you walk in, the shower and sinks are in front of you, followed by the bath and toilet beyond the shower cubicle. There’s a single sink, but dual taps (more on that in a minute).
There’s a large shower that can deliver water through either the ceiling or a standard shower head. There is no hand-held shower head in here. There is, however, a seat for you to rest on, should you need it mid-wash.
The amenities are by Jo Loves, the same Jo of Jo Malone. I’m not familiar with this brand (my wife gave me the backstory), but the smell was outstanding.
I mentioned that there’s a second tap in the bathroom. This is a filtered tap specifically for drinking water. I have never seen this in a hotel before, and it was a nice touch. It was useful when we needed to fill our water glass before bed.
Finally, there are more amenities in a cute tray.
The gym at the Pan Pacific
The gym is located on the fourth floor, offering a view of the patio adjacent to the pool area. It’s open twenty-four hours, and there were plenty of hotel guests suffering from jet lag in there at 5am.
It’s not a huge gym, but it has clearly been updated recently, and a good amount of money has been spent on it. The kit is new, and there’s a decent range of machines, including two digital screens that can guide you on exercises.
Finally, there’s a giant TV screen that seems disproportionately big for a gym of this size.
If you’re hitting the gym around sunrise, then you’ll get to experience it as two of the four walls are glass, looking out to the pool area. There’s something a little big magical, and maybe depressing, seeing the sun come up when you’re working out.
The pool and poolside bar
The Pan Pacific has a fantastic pool area. You access it on the 4th floor, and it’s open from 7am to 10pm daily. As you enter, you can grab towels from the staff members on the left-hand side.
There’s a range of seating, from comfy cabanas to sunbeds, bar-style seating and regular table seats. There’s also a group of cabanas off to the right-hand side that are more secluded and quieter, but without views of the pool. All the seating is available at no cost.
We visited four times during our stay, dining by the pool on one occasion. There’s a decent menu with light bites, and a good range of drinks. The juices, however, come from a carton, unlike the executive lounge, where they are freshly squeezed. The food (we had the satay, with fries) was very good.
The pool was reasonably busy at all times (the pictures I took were at 7am one day) with a mixture of singles, couples and families.
The pool itself is split into two, with one half existing as a shallower, kid-friendly pool. Neither the adult nor the child pool is big enough to do laps in, but they are perfectly fine for sitting in and cooling off.
At the back of the pool area is the St. Gregory Spa and the Urban Jungle Village, which is quite a large space just for kids (and their parents).
Next to the pool is a large seating area, which is walled off from the pool area itself. It’s probably a good place to sit if you want to be outdoors, but don’t want to sit in a cabana. This space has a large outdoor chess set, but it does feel a bit empty and devoid of character.
The pool was neither busy nor quiet whenever we went. It was easy to get a seat and easy to get served every time we went.
Singapore is my favourite place to sit out by the pool. The temperature feels just right (sometimes it’s so perfect that I fall asleep), and it’s not the holiday destination for rowdy Brits, so it’s serene. The Oasia Downtown remains my favourite pool in Singapore, as it was nearly always completely empty and it had a full-sized lap pool, but the Pan Pacific is a very close second.
Fear of heights?
This hotel is not for the faint-hearted. If you’re on a lower floor, you’ll use a lift that travels up the inside of the building. It’s a glass lift that hangs over the atrium.
To access the higher floors, you use a bank of lifts that transport you on the outside of the building. These are also glass lifts.
The views are exceptional, but more than once, we were in the lift with someone who was standing very close to the doors, facing away from the view. I’m going to guess they were not comfortable.
Luckily, the lifts are quite fast, but if you have a deep-rooted fear of heights, you might want to reconsider staying at this hotel.
Food and drink at the Pan Pacific
There’s a good selection of restaurants in the building, and then hundreds (I kid you not) of options within a five-minute radius of the hotel. You will never go hungry, regardless of your preferred cuisine.
For sit-down food, there’s Edge (International lunch and dinner, and serves breakfast as an alternative to the exec lounge), the Cantonese restaurant Hai Tien Lo (Lunch and Dinner). The Keyaki Japanese restaurant sits within its own beautiful gardens, and that serves both lunch and dinner.
For lighter options, there’s a small patisserie on the ground floor, opposite the check-in desks and concierge, and a larger, sit-down coffee, cake, ice cream, and sandwich space called the Pacific Emporium on the ground floor. We didn’t get a chance to eat here, but the cakes and chocolates looked amazing as we passed through. It will remain one of my deepest regrets that we didn’t visit (which is why we’re planning to return).
Afternoon tea can be served inside the pods located on the ground floor. This looked like a lot of fun, but we ran out of time to try this.
Finally, there’s the Plume cocktail bar, poolside dining and then 24 hour room service. We used the latter after we arrived at the hotel and the food was perfectly fine for a late night snack.
The executive lounge
The Pacific Club Lounge is probably the best executive lounge I have ever used, and it’s available all day, serving breakfast, afternoon tea, and dinner.
The opening times are:
- Open from 7am to 10pm
- Breakfast is from 7am to 10:30am
- Afternoon tea is 3pm to 5pm
- Evening drinks with canapes from 6pm to 8pm.
Of all the meals, the “evening drinks with canapes” undersells itself the most. There’s a buffet with a range of hot options, including steak on some nights. It is not a few light bites on a plate; it is, in my opinion, a solid exec lounge dinner service that can absolutely replace a restaurant meal.
The food options across all meals are very good. It goes way beyond a typical UK Hilton exec lounge.
At breakfast, you can help yourself to a buffet or order from a menu. Coffee is delivered by the staff member who seats you (and you’re always walked to a seat when you get out of the lift). You can also have a champagne breakfast if you so want, and that’s included.
The staff, who are numerous, are truly great. From greeting you as you get off the lift, to waving you off as you head back down to your room, they were consistently on top form.
Then there’s the views. The lounge is on the 38th floor, and you get incredible views towards Marina Bay Sands. It looks great during the day or stunning at night. You can just about make out the light show at the Gardens On The Bay in the evening.
There is a dress code for this lounge during the evening drinks, which is no slippers, no flip flops and no tank tops. Children under 12 are also disinvited from the evening drinks. I had no problem getting into the lounge in shorts, trainers and a t-shirt.
A problem, and our deep thanks.
Our next stop after Singapore was the Desaru Coast in Malaysia. This is a 2.5-hour drive, so we had arranged a taxi via Emirates, which uses the CarTrawler service. They sub the jobs out to a local car service.
A couple of hours before we were due to get picked up we had a WhatsApp message from an unknown number. They told us that they had declined our job a week before, but CarTrawler had not updated their systems. Trying to get hold of CarTrawler was a task in itself, but eventually, we were told not to worry, we could have a full refund. By this time, we had to go around 30 minutes until our pickup.
We went to the concierge desk on the ground floor, and Brendan was our saviour. Despite it being a national holiday in Malaysia, he worked his magic and came up with a solution. A local taxi would take us across the border, and then our next hotel would pick us up from there.
It was not an easy process for him, so we were deeply appreciative of his hard work. The hotel let us check out an hour later, so whilst he was hitting the phones, we spent some extra time in our beautiful room.
We ended up arriving at the Malaysia hotel an hour later than planned, which was a better result than we thought possible.
It goes without saying that we won’t use CarTrawler again. We had to initiate a chargeback with American Express to recover what we had paid. The customer experience was terrible.
The verdict on the Pan Pacific
A great room, in a great hotel, in a great location. There’s little to fault the Pan Pacific. Add in the exceptional executive lounge, the relaxing pool and a modern gym, and you have what is close to being a perfect hotel.
If you want to be picky, then yes, you’re paying for the quality, but in my opinion, £500 a night for a giant two-bathroom suite isn’t outrageous, and there are more expensive hotels in Singapore that deliver less value.
On our last two trips, we’ve stayed at the Oasia Downtown, in one of their suites. It’s nice, but on almost every level, the Pan Pacific beats this hotel, and the pricing is pretty much the same.
We also saved money by utilising the executive lounge. Occasional afternoon teas, having drinks in the evening and eating there for breakfast every day helped reduce our food expenditure. It didn’t feel like we were scrimping on the quality to save money, the food options were very good.
Overall, we loved this hotel; we’re already excited about returning in 2026.
Rating the Pan Pacific SIngapore
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