Raffles Sentosa Opens as Singapore’s First All-Villa Resort

Raffles Sentosa Singapore opened in March 2025 on Sentosa, the resort island off the south coast of Singapore, about fifteen minutes from the business district. It is the second Raffles in the city where the name was born, after the 1887 hotel on Beach Road, and it is a different proposition: Singapore’s first resort made up entirely of villas.

There are 62 of them, set in ten hectares of tropical garden on a slope above Tanjong Beach. Each has a private pool, an outdoor terrace and a garden, and they range from 211 square metres for a one-bedroom villa to 650 square metres for the four-bedroom Royal Villa. The design is by Yabu Pushelberg, the Canadian studio also responsible for Rosewood Guangzhou, with floor-to-ceiling glass facing the planting. Old ficus trees were kept on the site, and peacocks wander the grounds.

The resort has five restaurants and lounges. Empire Grill serves modern Italian food under chef Bjoern Alexander, Royal China offers Cantonese cooking, and Iyasaka by Hashida is an omakase counter by Kenjiro Hashida. The Raffles Room is the place for afternoon tea, and the Chairman’s Room for whisky, cognac and wine. The spa has 13 treatment rooms, guests have access to Sentosa Golf Club at preferential rates, and each villa is looked after by a Raffles butler.

The developer is The Royal Group, a Singapore property company founded in 1947, and the resort is operated by Accor.

Singapore’s best hotels have until now been city hotels, among them The Singapore EDITION and Pan Pacific Orchard, both opened in 2023. Raffles Sentosa adds something the city lacked at this level: a place to stay for several days with a pool and a garden of one’s own, within a short drive of the restaurants and museums.