South Beach to offer largest stock of women-only rooms

Singapore

CITY Developments Ltd (CDL) and IOI Group's The South Beach hotel will have one of the biggest inventories of women-only rooms for a Singapore hotel.

The 654-room hotel will have 80 such rooms across three floors. Two floors are in the main tower and the third one is in the adjoining podium, Padang Terrace.

The hotel occupies levels one to 21 in the development's 45-storey main tower.

The women-only rooms come with special amenities including a facial steamer and Davines toiletries, in addition to complimentary items such as a boyfriend shirt and novelty bedroom slippers.

There is also additional security on the ladies' floors, with an additional door at the lift landing that the women need to unlock before they can access their own room door. Female butler services are also provided.

The hotel has so far rolled out 200 rooms in stages since opening its doors earlier this month. During the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, room rates at the hotel were from S$900++ per night. Outside of that event, rates are from S$490++, though there is a promotional preview package that runs until Dec 29, for which a guest pays for two nights but gets to stay for three nights.

A spokesman for South Beach Consortium, the CDL-IOI joint venture that developed the South Beach mixed-development project, declined to provide occupancy rates for the rooms that have opened, but said that "although the hotel has not released its full rooms inventory . . . it has managed to achieve good RevPAR (revenue per available room) rates".

The South Beach expects to open all its rooms by year-end.

Chee Hok Yean, a veteran hotel consultant, said The South Beach "could be the only hotel in Singapore to have dedicated so many rooms to women only".

The 80 rooms make up 12.2 per cent of the hotel's total room count, noted Ms Chee, who is executive director at Chestertons.

She made an argument for the business case for hotels to provide women-only floors. "In addition to the safety aspect, this allows a hotel to better provide amenities for women, whether it is a certain type of hair dryers or soaps, etc. Most business travellers are men, and women travellers often find that the toiletries and scents in hotel rooms can be quite 'manly'. Even the bedroom slippers and bath robes tend to over sized."

Setting aside floors for women is a welcome move, added Ms Chee. "Women would like to feel they have been thought about . . . they would like to be pampered."

There is scope for hotels to offer more for rooms on a women's-only floor - such as a special floral arrangement and perhaps serving pastry as snacks, suggested Ms Chee, who does a good amount of travelling as part of her job.