Copthorne King's Hotel Staycation

To be frank, Copthorne King’s Hotel wasn’t high on my list for staycation. However, ever since I attained the Premium status for Millennium Hotel’s loyalty programme, I had not stayed in a Millennium hotel; I was very curious how different the experience would be for a Premium member?

For reference, a Premium member of the loyalty programme could enjoy early check in (from 10am) and late check out (till 2pm), subject to availability, dining discounts at in-house restaurants and earn more points per stay, among other perks.

To attain this status, one needs to accumulate either 8 nights of qualifying stay or 15,000 points within a 12-month period. To maintain this status, they have to clock the same criteria nights/points within the 12 months after attaining the status. To elevate to the topmost tier, one needs to clock 20 nights or 40,000 points.

The only remaining hotels from the Millennium brand I had yet to stay was M Social and Copthorne King’s Hotel , so I thought I would try Copthorne King’s given the flood of positive reviews it enjoyed on TripAdvisor regarding its service and room.

Room wise, the décor was still dated to the 90s, with red hardwood furniture, semi-circle balcony, huge-ass in-room safe and a chillaxing couch – basically everything you miss from pre-boutique hotel era, and everything you hope will disappear.

The ones I would not miss would be the lack of good soundproofing. Not only could I hear activities from the corridor loud and clear (I knew my neighbour called for housekeeping a few times), due to the balcony, the window/door was not soundproofed and so the traffic was audible even from the 12^th storey.

Just how bad was the soundproofing in the hotel? There was a wedding banquet in their event room on Level 2 on Saturday night. When I entered the lift at the lift lobby, I could hear the emcee from the banquet. When the door closed, I could still hear him all the way until Level 4. When the door opened at level 6, I hear the emcee again.

My goodness.

I would not miss the old toilet design; it had been a long time I had showered with an immovable shower head and had to mix my water to the right temperature by twisting the hot and cold knobs, separately. There was not enough room for toiletries at the shower area (which was a bathtub and shower combined), so there was a lot of bending over and having water flow from the back to the head, while picking up the toiletries from the edge of the bathtub.

The mirror misted after shower, and stayed that way for quite some time, rendering it unusable for post-shower whatever you want to do. The tissue box was fixed to the bathroom wall for unknown reasons.

Another aspect of the bad soundproofing was in the toilet – anyone in the bedroom can hear what’s going on inside the toilet, so you can guess how weird/personal the bad soundproofing can get.

There was zero bedside power sockets, so one could not do pre-sleep mobile surfing, without having to climb out of bed to plug the device in at the vanity table on the other side of the room, and returning to bed all excited an unable to sleep.

Not all was bad; there were 2 mirrors in the bedroom (on top of that in the bathroom), slippers were provided and wifi. Bathrobes were provided upon request, and ironing facilities were available.

Service wise, my greatest bug was that… each room can only have a maximum of 3 bottles of water for free – I couldn’t ask for more. The earliest I could check in was 1pm and the latest I could check out was 12pm, which they might as well don’t offer for Premium members – I guess they just decided to limit what they could give to Premium members by exercising the full extent of the fine prints of their Terms and Conditions.

“Sorry, we are fully booked today” – when rejecting my request to check in at 11am.

“Sorry, we are fully booked tomorrow” – when rejecting my request to check out later than 12pm (I wanted to let them offer me a timing, but well…)

When we dialled Housekeeping at 2pm, no one picked up the phone and that happened 5 times. I only got a response at about 3.15pm. We asked for bottled water and bathrobe – the first was delivered about 15 minutes later, and the latter about 5 minutes thereafter because the chambermaid forgot about the bathrobes.

Security at the hotel was in the drains. Any Tom, Dick and Harry can access the room levels as the lift did not restrict access.

Level 3 of Copthorne King’s Hotel was where the executive Club Lounge (which I could only access only if I checked in to a Club room) and the gym and pool were. The pool was not gigantic, but as far as I could remember, the one at M hotel was around the same size. The downside was the limited number of sun beds around the pool. For those who liked steam rooms and sauna, you could find it here.

The gym was well-quipped, though small. They had 3 treadmills and a weight station, though I thought the small space was too claustrophobic. But mind you, I only walked past the gym and the pool, so I cannot really vouch for the use-experience.

Breakfast was included in my room rate, so despite knowing that “the hotel is fully booked”, I still went down to recoup my losses, considering how disappointing my experience had been thus far.

Breakfast was held at the Princess Terrace café at level 1, just beside the reception. The variety was decent, with a lot of local flavour, catering to those who wanted light fare (plain porridge or cereals) or savoury (fried noodles, fried vegetarian spring rolls, potato wedges) to the usual continental (I liked their croissant and pastry).

My breakfast was the best experience of my stay, I might say.

Princess Terrace is also the saving grace of Copthorne King’s with its Penang Buffet, which starts at 6.30pm with a full blown Peranakan gastronomic experience.

Another plus point happened while I was checking out; the manager knew my room number before I even gave him my room card. Well, I suppose I gained a reputation for consistently asking for privileges (as stated in the Terms and Conditions) despite “the hotel was fully booked”. Well, you never know if you don’t try, right?

To their credit, the manager did upgrade my superior room to the deluxe room, downgrading my twin bed to a double bed. On hindsight, since the superior rooms did not have balconies and were at the end of the corridor, perhaps I would have a quieter stay had I not been upgraded #fwp

As a conclusion, I would say this would be a good hotel to stay in if you are just looking for a decent place to stay. It is definitely not a choice for staycation, and definitely not for loyal Millennium hotels members looking to be recognised for their loyalty – because they don’t care.

It was unfortunate that my stay at Copthorne King’s Hotel was unpleasant. Yet, not all stays I had with Millennium Hotels were bad. I fell in love with M Hotel in Shenton Way way back. Or you can read my newer reviews like Four Points by Sheraton, or even my review of hotels overseas.

Hopefully, those will make you feel good so that you will like and share my posts and even follow my blog!