Duxton Reserve, Autograph Collection, Singapore 🇸🇬 – authentic, stylish & in the heart of Chinatown

Duxton Reserve impresses with it´s history and stylish interior design. Ideally located in the heart of the city, it offers the perfect base for exploring and getting things done in this fantastic city. Take a look at this hotel and find out what the catch is. Check it out.

Location

Duxton Reserve is located in the heart of Singapore’s old town, also known as Tanjong Pagar, and in the middle of China Town. Here you are right in the centre of all the hustle and bustle of this unique city. Starting from here, you can easily reach all the sights. Also you might have found a hotel that is perfectly located.

Arrival

I flew in from Frankfurt with Lufthansa in Business Class on the 747 – 800 upper deck on a direct service to Singapore. Fabi had already traveled to Asia earlier and flew from Bangkok with Thai Airways on their Dreamliner 787 – 8, also in Business Class. You can watch or read both reviews here or of course as a video on our YouTube channel. Link!

How to get to the hotel

We met at Singapore Changi Airport and took the grab from there to Duxton Reserve in just under half an hour. Of course, the time varies greatly depending on the traffic situation. However, there is also the option of taking the subway from the airport to the hotel in an hour with just one change. The trains are punctual, clean and safe. Tanjong Pagar train station can be reached with the green MRT line EW. From the station, it is just under a 10-minute walk to the hotel.

Check-in

You can drive right up to the hotel entrance of Duxton Reserve. The street is very small and quiet. You can unload everything relaxed just in front of the entrance. Although there is no real driveway, you will always find a possibility to park at the side of the road without any problems. As we arrived, the hotel unfortunately didn’t provide any assistance with our suitcases. There are a handful of steps leading up to the entrance. Unfortunately, there is no ramp or anything similar.

Upon check-in, we were the only guests and went straight in. The lady at reception greeted us in a very friendly manner and was well prepared. We were given the most important information and were through with all the formalities within a few minutes. As Marriott Bonvoy Titanium members, we were able to choose between several benefits and opted for an extra 1000 points and breakfast. Beyond that, however, there were no other welcome drinks or gifts. No cold towel or anything like that

Overview of Duxton Reserve

Duxton Reserve is located in the heart of historic Singapore and in the middle of Chinatown. The old buildings used to be 8 individual narrow warehouses, but were merged together in the 1990s and converted into a hotel. In 2018, Six Senses decided to open the first ever city-based hotel in the company’s history right here in Singapore. They subsequently acquired and converted the building complex. The hotel owner was then, and still is today, the Garcha Group. However, after 2 devastating Covid years, Six Sense abandoned the “city hotel” business and sold the complex to Marriott. Here it was finally renamed Duxton Reserve and opened in 2020 as the first Autograph Hotel in Singapore.

Due to its previous use as a warehouse, the rooms – as in most hotels in Singapore – are quite small. The largest suite here measures just 51 square meters. In addition to the reception and lobby, the first floor also houses the bar and restaurant. The rooms are located on the two floors above. The hotel has a total of 49 rooms – 23 of which are suites.

The entire hotel was designed by Anouska Hempel who is a former Bond Girl and chose interior design as her second career. The entire interior is high quality and beautiful! Everything feels very authentic and cozy. The dominant black results in the hotel looking very stylish, but ultimately leads to it being really dark and the small rooms feeling even darker.

Suite

As usual, we had booked the lowest room category. In this case the Shophouse room. Due to our status with Marriott Bonvoy, we were upgraded to the Opium Suite. This is the smallest of the 5 available suite types. At just 32 square meters, it would just be somewhat of a better room in other hotels around the globe. But in Singapore, space is a rare commodity and so this is a normal suite size at most hotels in the city centre.

Unfortunately, the rooms are super noisy. The doors are not really insulated and you can even hear the other guests WALKING past the door. Let alone them talking. Our suite no. 53 was located on the third floor of the building.

Living room & bedroom

Just behind the front door, we were already standing right in front of the bed. The room is so small that only a mini table with two benches fit in next to the four-poster bed. There is a coffee machine and a bottle of water on the table which is placed in front of the window of which both can be used free of charge. In addition, there is only a small board with a Bakelite telephone on top of it next to the bed.

The bed is comfortable and there is a comforter and 4 identical pillows waiting for you. Unfortunately, there is a kind of frame around the bed. Access is only possible on one side. Although this looks nice, it is extremely impractical. At night, you have to climb over the “parapet” or the person lying next to you to get out. In addition, tall people tend to bump their feet into the foot end.

On the left, two steps down is where you find a kind of walk-in closet with an integrated minibar. Placed in the middle of the room is a relatively large piece of seating furniture. It’s not really easy to store suitcases here – everything is quite cramped as every centimeter of room space is used.

The minibar is nicely equipped and looks like a real little bar. Everything is beautifully prepared and there is even a fresh lemon and orange ready to be used for freshly mixed cocktails. All drinks and snacks are available for a fee.

Bathroom

Here, too, every piece of space has been used and the layout is ideal for such a small room. In addition to the toilet and walk-in rain shower, there is also a washbasin. All necessary toiletries are provided. The shampoo, conditioner and body wash in the shower are supplied by Dypthique. The body milk is provided by ETRO.

Turndown

I have to say that a good turndown service can really excite me and I always look forward to what awaits me on the room once I return in the evening. I was therefore eager to see how the suite was prepared for the night. After all, the turndown service is prominently advertised on the homepage. Unfortunately, however, nothing happened in our case ans no turndown was completed.

View

Well. To be honest, there is none. The view is into a small backyard and the window, which is already relatively covered, is on top of that blocked by the table. As a result, the room is unfortunately quite dark.

Lounge

During our stay, Anouska’s Bar functioned as a lounge. The beautiful bar offers 8 small tables and has a very intimate feel. The interior reminded me a little of the Titanic Bar. Very chic & sophisticated.

Each person can order 5 snacks and 5 drinks from a menu. You are free to choose and, if in doubt, you will also receive friendly advice.

The hotel has a sister hotel only a 3 minutes’ walk away. The Maxwell Reserve also has a lounge for status guests. As a guest you can choose to have your snacks either in your own hotels lounge, in the other one or dived up in both lounges. We have tried both and can only recommend them. A few snacks here, a short walk and then the rest of the snacks there. That was real fun.

Hotel activities

Pool

If you fancy a refreshing, you can do so at the sister hotel Maxwell Reserve. Unfortunately, the Duxton Reserve does not have its own pool.

Fitness Center

As with the pool, you have to go to the sister hotel for a gym. The facilities are available there.

Tours

The hotel is ideal for excursions into Singapore. Regardless of whether you are staying at the hotel for business or pleasure. All important and interesting places can be reached easily starting from Duxton Reserve. For example you can get to the famous Gardens by the Bay and all the surrounding sights by train without any problems.

Restaurants

Yellow Pot

The in-house restaurant Yellow Pot serves Chinese dishes in an authentic ambience. The elegant interior is complemented by a narrow terrace located in the hotel’s arcades.

Breakfast is also served here. If you would like to find out more, take a look at the section below.

Anouska´s Bar

The bar at the end of the small lobby also functions as a lounge during happy hour. Further information about that can be found in the text above. After happy hour, however, you can also use the bar also as a non-authorized guest. The space is really beautiful and highly recommended for an evening drink!

Breakfast

At Duxton Reserve, breakfast is served in the hotel’s own restaurant, Yellow Pot. Due to the small size of the hotel, there is no buffet and only à la carte is provided. Generally, we really like this setting and given the small number of guests who have breakfast here, it does make perfect sense. However, it took a little more explaining before we understood that we could choose from the menu either one of the Continental Breakfast options or two meal options and one juice per person. You can get coffee as much as you like. Sparkling wine is only available for an extra charge.

We opted for the individual dishes and juice and found the food okay. Not insanely fantastic, but decent.

If you don’t have breakfast included due to your status or rate, you can of course still have breakfast here for a fee. However, we found the prices to be highly overdone, to say the least!

The service was basically okay. But not really great either. The one restaurant employee somehow couldn’t really keep up, even though only two other guests were having breakfast here at the same time as the two of us.

Check-out

As with check-in, check-out was quick, easy, friendly and professional. We were asked if we needed any assistance with our departure and how we enjoyed our stay. The lady at reception also told us that she very much hoped we would consider staying at the Duxton Reserve again on our next visit to the city, but hopefully for longer than just one night.

Costs

For our one night stay, we paid 376 Singapore dollars. That’s the equivalent of just under 257 euros. Mind you, this was for the smallest room category.

Departure and onward journey

As Singapore was only a very short stopover for us and we only met here to travel on to Langkawi, we took a grab back to the airport. Follow us on our trip to the Malaysian dream island. We have tested the 4 best hotels there just for you. So stay tuned. It’s worth it!

Conclusion

Duxton Reserve is a beautiful hotel that is perfectly located at the heart of the city to reach all the sights easily and quick. Unfortunately, due to the emphasis on style, the spaciousness and lightness of the hotel suffers. The rooms were really very small and low. Unfortunately not quite soundproofed as well.

Recommendation

We can recommend the Duxton Reserve more for couples and single travelers as we don’t think it’s very suitable for families. You would have to squeeze into the rooms quite a bit.

Hotel Homepage

The Duxton Reserve Hotel Singapur

Rating

We award Duxton Reserve 8 out of 10 possible points. Deducting one point from the hotel for the fact that the breakfast was somehow strangely limited and the service was very quite indifferent. Another point is deducted for the very, very small and very badly insulated rooms.

Go there?

Yeah… You can go and stay at Duxton Reserve. But in our opinion you as guests have to have to really find joy in style to be able to overlook the difficult issues.

YouTube Review