My choice for a sustainable Singapore stopover

Liv­ing in Australia/New Zea­l­and and hav­ing fam­ily in Ger­many means that I travel reg­u­larly to Europe. And that often takes me via Singa­pore. Now, if you have ever done long-haul travel with kids you will know that it is quite a chal­lenge to hop off one 12-hour flight, just to board anoth­er. So we typ­ic­ally stop­over in Singa­pore for a couple of nights. 

Search­ing for a place that has some sus­tain­ab­il­ity cre­den­tials, and also offers a bit of a nat­ur­al envir­on­ment, we came across the Siloso Beach Resort on Sen­tosa Island. It’s not too far from the air­port — noth­ing in Singa­pore is — and is also close to some key attrac­tions, like the Mar­ina Bay area with its fant­ast­ic gar­dens and cloud dome.

The inside track

Dr Susanne Beck­en is Pro­fess­or of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism at Grif­fith Uni­ver­sity, Aus­tralia; Prin­cip­al Sci­ence Invest­ment Advisor (Vis­it­or) for New Zealand’s Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion; and the Vice Chan­cel­lor Research Fel­low at the Uni­ver­sity of Sur­rey, UK.

The first time was a bit of a try. Since then we’ve not tried any­where else. Siloso is hard to beat. The resort is built into the rain­forest on the south­w­est part of Sen­tosa Island. What is unique about it is that the accom­mod­a­tion vil­las and block were built around exist­ing trees. Some trees even cut through the interi­or space. The archi­tects wanted to min­im­ise any modi­fic­a­tion to the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment dur­ing con­struc­tion. The (rather large) swim­ming pool is an organ­ic shape that fol­lows a con­tour of the slope, with a “water­fall” (and water slide) top­ping it up from high­er ground. It truly feels like a green oasis. 

From the rooftop ter­race you can see across the Singa­pore Strait with all the large ships anchored or com­ing in and out. Quite a sight. 

Also on the roof is the organ­ic veget­able and herb garden that sup­plies the res­taur­ant down­stairs. The res­taur­ant con­trib­utes to anoth­er high­light of our stay: Break­fast at the bot­tom of the hill, at the Siloso Beach Walk, enjoy­ing freshly-baked crois­sants while watch­ing Singa­por­ean (I assume) youth ped­alling along on rent­al bicycles. 

There are lots of oth­er little gems around the resort for a sus­tain­ab­il­ity buff like me. For example, the spa pool uses heat energy from the air­con­di­tion­ing sys­tem that would oth­er­wise be wasted. 

How do I know all this? Well, the hotel’s sus­tain­ab­il­ity man­ager offers tours of the prop­erty and is very happy to answer a mil­lion ques­tions. There are also signs around the place that explain some of the innov­a­tions, as well as inform­a­tion on their web­site.

Writ­ing this, of course, I can­’t wait to stay there again, des­pite feel­ing guilty about my car­bon foot­print. That is because it is such a great place, and because it holds the prom­ise of see­ing my fam­ily again soon; some­thing I haven’t had the priv­ilege of doing since 2019 thanks to COVID-19. 

If you ask my daugh­ter what the best part of the resort is, she would without hes­it­a­tion say: “The water slide.”

Where is this?

Siloso Beach Resort
51 Imbi­ah Walk, Sen­tosa, Singa­pore
Tel: +65 6722 3333 | E‑mail: enquiry@silosobeachresort.com

Where next?