Kids Themed Room at Village Hotel Bugis (review)

Here's a review of the Kids Themed Room at Village Hotel Bugis (VHB) that I booked recently for a staycation.

This is not a sponsored review though. I paid SGD 213 for a weekday night stay which includes breakfast. The price will vary depending on whether there are any promotion. Do note also that VHB also has family rooms with assortment of beds, e.g. King + single, 3x single, etc. If you have a kid or two small ones, I do recommend checking out the Kids Themed Room. The price is not too different from the family room anyway, and without comparing with other hotels, the Kids Themed Room is quite reasonably priced. And VHB seem to be the only Village Hotel that has the Kids Themed Room.

Village Hotel Bugis was formally known as the Golden Landmark Hotel (1988) or Landmark Village Hotel. It's located at 390 Victoria St, Singapore 188061 which is an excellent location for any tourist since it's near the Bugis MRT station (East-West and Downtown line) and near many places tourists may want to visit (within walking distance), namely

• Parkview Square
• Sultan Mosque and Kampong Glam
• Arab Street
• Haji Lane
• Little India
• Bugis
• Sim Lim Square (electronics)

And you can take the public bus to even more places! Chinatown, Esplanade, City Hall, Marina Bay, Fort Canning Park, National Gallery, Singapore Art Museum.

The hotel is actually connected to the Golden Landmark Shopping Complex which was built in the 1980s. This shopping mall is definitely overshadowed by the newer and more popular ones nearby like Bugis Junction and Bugis+. Even the Albert Centre and Fu Lu Shou Complex seem livelier by comparison. Anyway, there are some convenience shops within the building so that's convenient.

This is the Kids Themed Room which was launched a few years ago. Design of each room may differ. I've seen photos shared by other guests and some of the designs don't look the same. See here, here and here.

This is the official promotional photo from the hotel. It looks like the walls in our room have been painted with new more kid-friendly artworks, in this case it's the Mr Bean themed artworks.

My almost 3-year-old girl really liked the art.

The moment my kid stepped into the hotel room, she knew instantly what's going on and went straight into the tent. The balloons are mine by the way. Cushion are from the hotel. The tent is not that big and certainly can't fit a kid and adult together at the same time.

The pillow case and bed sheet are also children themed. They look really beautiful.

The kids bed is actually a sofa bed that's unfolded. That's why there are those big cushion. The bed surface is quite firm, but not hard and I think should be comfortable for kids. I personally don't mind sleeping on it.

Even the lamps have cute designs.

I could tell my kid was really happy and enjoyed herself tremendously.

This VHB is actually more than 30 years old. I'm pretty sure the room has undergone refurbishment over the years. Room condition is well maintained. Room is clean, toilet is clean. Only downside is the air-con is too cold and there's no way to adjust the temperature. I mean you can adjust the temperature up and down with the control but the actual temperature does not change.

There are also baby toiletries, e.g. baby shower gel, shampoo.

This is the hotel restaurant which was quite deserted. I counted just 5 families in the morning during breakfast. It's not surprising considering we are still in the middle of the pandemic and there have been practically no tourists for months, and unfortunately may remain so for months to come. To say that now is an extremely difficult time for hotels is an understatement.

Note that Village Hotel does host Stay-Home-Notice guests. Maybe that's why there are so few public guests. You can't even book rooms for Village Hotel Changi. Hotels have strict regulations for safety especially during this pandemic period and SHN guests stay on their own floors, and can't leave the rooms.

Due to not having that many guests, breakfast is served from trolleys pushed around by staff.

The breakfast was alright but you definitely don't get the variety you usually get with a buffet breakfast, but there's certainly more variety than shown on my plate.

By the way, some rooms have lounge access where you can have more food and alcohol but lounge services seem to be have been suspended, again probably due to the pandemic. Breakfast was included in the room price. Coffee was good.

Other facilities include the gym and swimming pool.

Conclusion

VHB has good service standards. I don't have anything much to say which is a good thing. We asked for late check out but the latest was 1pm. They said due to the stricter cleaning routine required, they needed more time to clean the room for the next guest.

The downsides are the hotel rooms and corridor look dated, and there's the temperature thing mentioned earlier. But overall, I feel like it's worth the money, and you can still use the SingapoRediscovers voucher to offset $100.

My kid really enjoyed the staycation. She was so excited and kept running around the room, jumping on the bed, kept going in and out of the tent. And when she woke up in the morning, first thing she did was go into the tent.

Whether it's worth the money has to depend on what you expect out of a staycation. If you have other activities planned and end with a stay at night, it could be a good experience. I did enjoy this staycation, and I'm happy my wife and kid did so too.

You can compare the prices for the rooms via these websites (non-affiliated links):
https://www.villagehotels.asia/en/hotels/village-hotel-bugis
https://sg.trip.com
https://www.agoda.com

SingapoRediscovers vouchers can be used on Trip.com