Hotel Kempinski a Singapore

The best about Capitol Kempinski is its convenient location - right opposite City Hall MRT and there's a sheltered path between MRT and hotel via the mall so that you don't get wet even on rainy days! The location is also so central that you can walk to many sightseeing spots from Merlion to Clarke Quay to Haji Lane. Staff were friendly - we especially appreciated Om the porter, who was very warm and helpful throughout our stay. Wonderful view from our room overlooking the St Andrew's Cathedral. Elegant and classy interior design. The Salvatore Ferragamo amenities smelt so good too! However, there were still a number of defects with this five-star luxury hotel: Both rooms we tried were very humid - our first room even had a water dripping sound every 4-5 seconds, so we could not sleep and had to request for a change of room the next morning, which the hotel arranged speedily. Our second room had no dripping sound but was equally humid - towels and swimming suits were still damp after one night. Thankfully, there was a fan in our Heritage Room, which helped dry things up a bit. Maintenance and facilities - toilet flushing was not great and shower water was not hot enough for our second room on 3/F. The TV there had no sound at first but got fixed eventually. There was no one watching the swimming pool when we visited, which could be prone to accidents even though it's only 1.2 m high. House-keeping - upon our arrival we found an open bottle of sparkling water in the fridge probably left by the previous guest, and two little tubes of conditioner (but no lotion - maybe we don't need it in a humid room, haha). This was quite unacceptable for a 5-star hotel. The higher parts of the rooms were dusty. We understand that the interior design makes it difficult to clean on a daily basis, but thorough deep-cleaning should still be carried out once in a while? Expectation management and food - we expected some sort of welcoming fruits and snacks as we filled out a survey from the hotel two days before our stay, asking about all our preferences. Disappointingly, none of our preferences got addressed during our stay. Buffet breakfast was quite tasty but not among the greatest varieties we had tried in other five-star hotels. I had the same experience with the other two hotels I have stayed in Singapore, so maybe this is still considered good enough for the city. I can imagine how beautiful this hotel was when it opened five years ago. But without proper maintenance and persistent house keeping work, its charm has diminished. Certainly a waste for a beautiful heritage cluster like this one. Still a fairly OK-nice stay overall.