Search This Blog

Thursday, February 12, 2009

$8 hotel room at Ibis Singapore on Bencoolen.

The other day, my colleague (shall call him ZS) came into my office room with such excitement. He asked me to go visit http://paywhatyouwant.com.sg and pay any amount you want for the hotel room. He said he put in $10 for his bid and got it.

I asked him why not lower? Well, the website seems to suggest $30 and so he thought $10 was low enough.

I thought why not try $8? So I registered and bid for a $8 room and I got it. He was like 'hey, that's lower than my bid'. Then another colleague (shall call him Yippie) wanted to lower the bar, and bid for a $1 room. He got it! Ya, Yippie for him and ZS was like "hey, how can?"

So, he waited for the next contest timing and he got a room for $1. He is happier now. LOL...

I booked the room for today and here's some photos of it. ZS and Yippie said I should put them up, so that it might be the first few photos of these place that's not created by Ibis PR people.

It's at 170 Bencoolen Street, Singapore 189657.
Brand new building that was recently completed.
(Just beside Fortune Centre, if your taxi driver does not know where it is)

One of the newest budget or economy hotels in Singapore.

A very elegant and modern building. If you have been to Ibis in another country, you have seen this sign too :-)

Ibis Hotel at Bencoolen Street.

Here's my $8 room. Bright and clean. Nice timber laminate flooring.
The spring's mattress is ok, but I will miss my Tempur Bed and Pillow at home.

But the view's outside the window's errrr. It's Singapore CBD so don't expect much. hehe...

The twin bed room. I think I prefer my tempur bed at home :-)

Two colleagues during lunch time to check out the room. They felt claustrophobic. But the other colleague says it is much bigger than Tokyo hotels. To maximise space, everything's very minimalistic in design. Beside this shelf with the mini safe, mini coffee set and micro fridge, is where you hang your clothes.

For the normal price you pay (I overheard the receptionist saying to another customer that the walk in rate is $148 today) it's still big enough, clean and comfortable.

The coffee maker, fridge and safe.

Yup, I said micro fridge. It's not a mini fridge.

A very mini fridge!

Micro, because it only fits two bottles of mineral water. LOL

The fridge only allows you to put in 2 bottles of water!

The flat screen TV is mounted on this mini wall piece and it's also where they put the Ibis related brochures. Saves space this way.

The TV console takes up very little place.

They must have bought more than 500 sets (I assume each room has a set and this hotel has 500 over rooms) of these TV, that they will put in the hotelibis.com label on it :-)
You get the local TV channels plus a few cable TV channels like ESPN, CNN, NHK etc.


They must have bought so many sets of TV that the manufacturer brands them ibishotel.com

Toilet's clean too.

Brand new hotel, so the toilets are clean.

Not grohe taps, but it's ok.

No Grohe but good enough to shower.

That's it. My short review of the $8 hotel room at Ibis Singapore on Bencoolen.
Hey, if you want to try the hotel yourself, quick go to http://paywhatyouwant.com.sg/ and bid for a room! :-)

They need instructions on how to turn on their air conditioned unit in the rooms. :-)
(Yeah, it's so hi tech, 3 guys who work in IT can't figure it out!)

(No, this is not a sponsored post, I paid for the $8 room.)

4 comments:

monkey girl said...

S$8 a room? The room looked perfectly fine. How was the food?

Anonymous said...

I stayed in it for $8 too!
Pretty good. I didn't go for its meals which is $15++
my reviews are here: http://www.iamalwayslovely.com

SumitReshu said...

Well it aint worth more than what you paid.

http://www.reshu.in/2009/04/hotel-ibis-on-bencoolen-singapore.html

Unknown said...

Monkey girl,
Din try the food. Heard it was ok... some local celebrity chef helped design their menu.

alwayslovely,
haha... many people stayed for $8 or even less ya...

SumitReshu,
So, it was ok when we paid $8 and not the original price?

I had two cards and it seemed to work though. Depends whether you got the front or back view. I faced the back, which did not have a very nice view, but my colleague had a front view which was ok though..