Mercure ICON Singapore City Centre (Chinatown) opening April 2024

[sudoer]

Accor is opening a new 989 room Mercure property in Singapore next month, and it's looking to be a very convenient and reasonably priced option. Accor Plus rates are around SG$235pn inc taxes for later this year.

Rates - Mercure ICON Singapore City Centre ALL - Accor Live Limitless

all.accor.com

The world's largest Mercure hotel to open in Singapore come Q1 2024

With 989 rooms, Mercure ICON Singapore City Centre aims to provide an integrated experience for both work and play.

www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg

A good one for the foodies - it's less than 10 min walk to Chinatown Complex, Hong Lim, Maxwell, Lau Pa Sat, and Amoy St hawker centres.

Very decent MRT connectivity too -
4 min walk to Telok Ayer (Downtown Line)
6 min to Maxwell (Thomson East Coast Line)
7 min to Chinatown (North East Line)
10 min to Raffles Place (East-West Line)

Will be great to have a well located mid-scale option now! I'll probably end up staying here on a layover in September.

 

[OZDUCK]

Accor is opening a new 989 room Mercure property in Singapore next month, and it's looking to be a very convenient and reasonably priced option. Accor Plus rates are around SG$235pn inc taxes for later this year.

Rates - Mercure ICON Singapore City Centre ALL - Accor Live Limitless

all.accor.com

The world's largest Mercure hotel to open in Singapore come Q1 2024

With 989 rooms, Mercure ICON Singapore City Centre aims to provide an integrated experience for both work and play.

www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg

A good one for the foodies - it's less than 10 min walk to Chinatown Complex, Hong Lim, Maxwell, Lau Pa Sat, and Amoy St hawker centres.

Very decent MRT connectivity too -
4 min walk to Telok Ayer (Downtown Line)
6 min to Maxwell (Thomson East Coast Line)
7 min to Chinatown (North East Line)
10 min to Raffles Place (East-West Line)

Will be great to have a well located mid-scale option now! I'll probably end up staying here on a layover in September.

We were looking at that hotel yesterday for a 2 night stopover in May The 'base' room for 2 goes for A$210 p/n then.

 

[sudoer]

Please report back if you end up staying!

 

[ThatMrBlake]

I've booked this for the Singapore F1 - roughly 500 aud a night, but that is competitive for F1 weekend.

 

[OZDUCK]

I have booked the 'base' room for 10-12 May. Two people and free cancellation. Using my free Accor membership it was Sing$310.

 

[henrus]

They seem to be opening even earlier I was just able to make a booking for the last day of this month.

 

[henrus]

So a follow up to my earlier post. They are accepting booking opening on 28 March (2 weeks and 1 day from now). So I'll be staying 3 days after opening - expect some photos/mini review here. I had booked elsewhere but it seems like fun to stay somewhere after it's just opened (that new car hotel smell

When it opens it'll be the biggest Mercure in the world (989 rooms). I'm hoping this means plenty of opportunities for an upgrade (I have Accor Gold).

 

[OZDUCK]

So a follow up to my earlier post. They are accepting booking opening on 28 March (2 weeks and 1 day from now). So I'll be staying 3 days after opening - expect some photos/mini review here. I had booked elsewhere but it seems like fun to stay somewhere after it's just opened (that new car hotel smell

When it opens it'll be the biggest Mercure in the world (989 rooms). I'm hoping this means plenty of opportunities for an upgrade (I have Accor Gold).

Hopefully it all works out for you. You can be the guinea pig to ensure that my stay in May is problem free

 

[jase05]

Looks pretty nice. Hopefully better than many other Mercure properties which IMO are quite average and many are becoming tired and dated.
Keen to see any TR’s on it

 

[SeaWolf]

Looks pretty nice. Hopefully better than many other Mercure properties which IMO are quite average and many are becoming tired and dated.
Keen to see any TR’s on it

I'd agree, the rooms in them are often quite small as well, however if they're one of the newer ones they can be pretty cheap and cheerful. I stayed at on in Vienna and in Madrid and they were both quite nice, though certainly not fancy. Rooms were fine for one person but would be a bit tight for a couple.

 

[pippen_2k]

I just booked in for a short getaway 15 - 19 April, happy to take some photos and give feedback.
Paid $810 for 4 nights, Classic Double Room

 

[henrus]

So my initial thoughts is that if you’re staying here in the next month you may want to think again. It’s not really ready and missing any bars/restaurants. Additionally most of the higher floors are still under construction.

I’ll provide a full review later.

 

[I love to travel]

So my initial thoughts is that if you’re staying here in the next month you may want to think again. It’s not really ready and missing any bars/restaurants. Additionally most of the higher floors are still under construction.

I’ll provide a full review later.

Would be great if you could comment on noise levels for sleep quality

 

[OnePenguin]

So my initial thoughts is that if you’re staying here in the next month you may want to think again. It’s not really ready and missing any bars/restaurants. Additionally most of the higher floors are still under construction.

I’ll provide a full review later.

Interested to read your full review. I'm considering booking here for a week in late April. The price seems very decent compared to a lot of accomodation in Singapore. Assuming the building is complete...

 

[ellen10]

I will also be interested in your review.
I am looking at staying here end of May for 1 night on our way home from Europe.

 

[henrus]

Ok so my initial review of the Mercure icon.

I had originally booked a different Mercure in Singapore but changed to this one when bookings opened. A little over a week before arrival one of their “Guest Relations Executive’s” reached out asking when I’d be arriving, I responded to this email within 40 minutes but didn’t get a confirmation for a further 3 days. Not sure what the point of this was as it didn’t seem to do anything.

Upon arrival someone did greet at the car to help with bags but as carry on only I didn’t need their assistance, I assume they’d take them to your room if you asked. Check in was fast enough and they did take a $200 deposit on top of room rate as a hold on the card (I guess that’s more of an issue for those who use debit cards). I was thanked for being Accor plus gold and received an upgrade from a classic room to a privilege room (2sqm larger and about $40 per night more). I was not offered a welcome drink so asked and was told the drink plus the welcome amenity would be delivered to the room later in the afternoon.

I set off to the lifts and scanned the card, the lifts are ones like new office towers where you scan card and press floor before being told what lift to get in however on the first panel the key kept saying expired. I tried the second one which seemed to work but actually took us to the 19th floor which was still a construction site. Eventually I got to my floor and only one of the two keys they’d cut worked on the door. The room clearly hadn’t been stayed in since the first day (or maybe ever) as a 28th March letter was on the desk about the pool closing early for pool pump tests.

Now the room is tiny, 19 sqm and not a lot of space and the bed headboards in our room look like it’s meant to be 1 double and 1 single (which would be even more cramped). From the pool you could see people with their bags up against the window (so all the rooms have problems with space it seems). The bathroom has just the shower and toilet with the sink outside in the room (including a filtered water tap with plastic cups) and the shower has cough ventilation. The TV and wifi worked fine so no issues there and power sockets are all international with some USB A sockets. Notably the TV only has about 25 channels (they do have ABC Australia) but that’s quite a small number for a place in Singapore.

There is a tiny fridge and a desk with a chair plus the privilege room has a pod coffee machine but oddly no pods, there was a couple of packets of instant coffee though. The room is quiet from the outside but terrible for noise from inside the hotel, you can clearly hear people walking in the hallway, their conversations in the hallway and when they open and close their doors. Again this hasn’t impacted me much because my floor only seems to have a couple of people on it but if the hotel was busy this could be a problem especially if a light sleeper.

My Accor gold welcome drink and amenity was delivered whilst we were out and let’s just say it’s poor, an Apple + pear and two sparkling soda things I probably won’t drink.

Now currently it seems the hotel is only using floors 3-9 with floor 2 and 10-19 still not open as a result there is still penalty of construction fencing and people around the hotel but I’m yet to have any noise impacts from this.

Now for amenities, currently the hotel lobby bar is closed and no clue when that will open. An Italian restaurant is also on the ground floor but outside the lobby and yet to open, Google says 8 April but it still looks like they’ve got a fair amount of work to do. On the second level is the main restaurant which currently is only open for a breakfast buffet (despite different times shown online), I can’t comment as I didn’t eat at the breakfast buffet. There is also a very tiny gym (3 treadmills, one bike and one stepper with a set of weights) but it’s a small room so 2-3 people would make it feel really crowded which for a 989 room hotel seems like an oversight. Finally the pool, it’s oddly quite warm (most other places I’ve stayed in Singapore have a really cold pool) and a good length with someone doing laps in it. The pool also has a spa attached to it in the same pool but pressing the buttons to turn on the jets doesn’t work. Once again a massive oversight is the lack of pool bar and seating as the area around the pool has a grand total of 16 seats (mixture of lounges and chairs) which once again for a 989 room hotel is a massive problem as we struggled to get one and the hotel is hardly full.

Now I did ask at the front desk about some of the problems including getting the key card fixed and was just told that they’re in soft opening (which in my opinion is not good enough) don’t get me wrong the price is good for Singapore and location is good (although the other Mercure are a similar rate on many searches I’ve done for dates I’m passing through) but I think there are a few big mistakes notably better sound proofing, more facilities for the 989 rooms and probably the biggest one is doing a soft opening. My issues are quite tiny but if you look at the reviews on Google (none of which are mine and I won’t be leaving one) there have been some big problems like people getting a key for someone else’s room or room not ready until well after check in). I feel like they need to address some of these issues first otherwise moving forward this place is going to have some terrible ratings online.

Would I stay here again… yes but only if the price is right and hopefully by then they’ve solved some of these “soft opening” problems.

 

[henrus]

Having problems uploading on the mobile so separate post with some photos:

This is the view of the pool from my room:



Desk area (and yes that’s the corner of the balcony next door), my room doesn’t have a balcony but some do:


Beds, noting the odd headboard position:


Shower/toilet space:


Another room photo:



Current state of the lobby bar:



Accor Gold welcome amenity and welcome drink:



This is on my floor, I assume they’re going to install a water cooler or something?



Finally this is an accessible lift at street level which just has rubbish in it. No idea when it’ll be operational:

 

[Telemachus]

Ok so my initial review of the Mercure icon.

Would I stay here again… yes but only if the price is right and hopefully by then they’ve solved some of these “soft opening” problems.

Thank you for taking one for the team. Rather discouraging findings, obviously, but it seems reasonable to expect that the basic stuff will have been addressed within a few weeks. I'm booked to stay here in late May and there are plenty of other viable options if the ICON is still not up to full operating capacity.

 

[Cloud9]

Booked in to stay here May 30 to June 5; will report back on whether things have improved since @henrus ' trip.

 

[pippen_2k]

Thanks for the review. I will still run the gauntlet in two weeks time.