Government offers Sentosa site on 50-year lease for wellness-themed hotel 

SENTOSA Development Corporation (SDC) has launched a tender for a new wellness-themed hotel near Sentosa Golf Club, offering the site on a 50-year lease.

The plot, located along Allanbrooke Road, is a stone’s throw away from Capella Singapore and Sofitel Singapore Sentosa Resort & Spa, indicated a notice placed by the statutory board in the local media. The site, currently occupied by two preschools, spans an area of 10,608.4 square metres (sq m). 

SDC said in the tender notice that it is seeking developers to develop a hotel that will offer “wellness offerings differentiated from the region that (are) backed by science and research” and which will cater to guests’ mental, physical and emotional needs. 

In response to queries from The Business Times, SDC said that the hotel would not exceed 60 keys, and the tender is open to all developers and operators with experience in hotel development, “particularly those with a focus on wellness and hospitality to develop and operate a wellness hotel”. The land lease tender is open to both local and international companies. 

The site originally housed the Apollo Hotel, one of Sentosa’s first few hotels after the island was repositioned from a former military base, which helped redefine Sentosa as a leisure and recreational destination catering to both locals and tourists, SDC said. 

The site includes a barracks building that will be retained. 

Two preschools now occupy the area – EtonHouse International School and Islander Pre-School, also run by EtonHouse. Islander Pre-School will soon relocate to Palawan Kidz City. 

SDC added: “Currently, we have 19 hotels and over 4,000 rooms on the island, and this new hotel development, focused on wellness, will be a continuation of our efforts to curate and develop a diverse range of tourism experiences.” 

Wellness is a new area of growth for Singapore tourism, and another site is on offer in the Marina South area for developers to build and operate a wellness attraction. A tender for the more than 42,000 sq m site closed on Oct 4 and has been extended to Nov 15 to provide more time for tenderers to develop their proposals, the Singapore Tourism Board said in response to BT’s queries. 

The Marina South Coastal site is being offered with a lease term of 45 years, with an option to extend for 15 years.

Some 15 million people visited Sentosa in 2023, which is 30 per cent higher than pre-pandemic figures, SDC chief executive Thien Kwee Eng said in an interview with The Straits Times in March. Of the 15 million visitors, 6.2 million were locals. 

Many new projects are in the pipeline for Sentosa island, also home to luxury condominiums and large landed houses. 

Last November, Genting Singapore received permission from the Urban Redevelopment Authority to develop two hotels totalling 700 rooms. Construction of the two hotels is expected to begin in the fourth quarter. 

Construction works are ongoing for Genting’s other projects – the Minion Land attraction, Singapore Oceanarium and the Central Lifestyle Connector which remain on track for a phased opening in the first quarter of 2025. 

In March, the S$90 million Sentosa Sensoryscape – which links Resorts World Sentosa and Sentosa’s beaches in the south – was opened. The Raffles Sentosa Singapore is also expected to open later this year. 

Checks by BT showed that Sentosa hotel room rates range from S$200 to S$1,400 per night. 

Calvin Li, JLL hotels and hospitality group’s head of transaction advisory services, said that a wellness resort would cater well to both domestic and international demand, with long-term growth potential. 

However, he added, capturing weekday demand is a challenge on Sentosa for hotels without sufficient meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions or leisure amenities. 

He noted: “If the positioning is luxury or upscale, the wellness offering has to be exceptional to entice weekday demand otherwise it would be challenging to make the economics stack up.” 

The tender for the new hotel site will close on Jan 17, 2025.