From Golden Dragon to RedDoorz  @  Geylang: One of Singapore's worst-rated hotels gets makeover

SINGAPORE - Mr Siah Seng Koon knew his hotel was falling into disrepair.

There were cigarette burns in the comforter, flies in the bathroom and questionable stains on the walls.

To add insult to injury, the former Golden Dragon Hotel in Geylang's red-light district had garnered an average rating of 1.5 out of five stars on travel ratings site TripAdvisor and a reputation as one of Singapore's worst hotels when this reporter wrote about her sleepless night there in 2019.

But solving these problems was beyond the 60-year-old hotel owner, who bought the land and built the hotel in the 1990s with his two brothers. He opened Golden Dragon in 1997 and has been running it since.

"I wanted to improve things, but my knowledge of hotel management was not up to date. I could not keep up with the demands of younger customers who are used to online ratings and bookings," says the Mandarin-speaking Mr Siah, a married man, who did not want to reveal more about his family or other businesses.

Golden Dragon relied mainly on walk-in customers, most of whom made two-hourly bookings on the spot and did not spend the night.

The occupancy rate of the 33-room property hovered between 40 and 50 per cent, about half the average rate of Singapore hotels. But it stayed afloat by offering some of the lowest room rates in the area.

So Mr Siah felt it was a stroke of good fortune when Singapore-based hotel management and booking platform RedDoorz decided to lease and makeover his property in July 2019.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV73TgWEP_I[/embed]

The hospitality start-up operates over 1,500 budget hotels across more than 120 cities in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

RedDoorz spent about three months, from September to November 2019, on an extensive renovation that cost about $100,000.

It included new lights, air-conditioning units, mattresses, linen and furniture in the rooms and lobby.

The lurid green walls and tired brocade curtains that were mentioned in The Sunday Times article in June 2019, have since been replaced with a red, white and grey colour palette. Wall murals in each room depict tourist attractions such as Marina Bay Sands and Gardens by the Bay.

Gone are the bathtubs pockmarked with cigarette burns and brown stains. Instead, bathrooms sport modern white subway tiles, soap and shampoo wall dispensers and simple amenity kits.

After its facelift, RedDoorz  @  Geylang now attracts new customers which include families and young travellers. Transit, or two-hour, bookings have fallen from 70 to about 15 per cent. And online ratings have inched up - RedDoorz @ Geylang is not yet listed on TripAdvisor, but has clocked an average rating of 7.4 out of 10 on travel booking platform Agoda.

Prices, too, have increased. A two-hour booking, which used to cost about $20, now starts at about $30.

Nightly rates range from $65 to $80, up from $45 to $50. However, current promotion rates are as low as $54 a night.

The hotel is one of 18 RedDoorz properties in Singapore, mostly found in city fringe locations such as Kallang, Little India and Lavender. The start-up, which was founded in 2015, has plans to expand to 29 hotels here by the end of the year.

Vice-president of operations Adil Mubarak says: "Small, unbranded hotels may lack the finances to upgrade and manage the property, so we bring in the tools to compete with bigger players out there."

[[nid:469069]]

He concedes that Golden Dragon Hotel was "not an easy transformation" due to the hotel's condition, but he believed the location had potential. In 2018, RedDoorz rebranded the former Lemon Grass Hotel into RedDoorz  @  Aljunied, located two streets away.

Mr Siah, who used to make about $30,000 a month running the hotel, has no regrets giving up the business.

He did not want to reveal the financial arrangements of his deal with RedDoorz. All he would let on was: "Although I earn about 20 per cent less as a landlord, I am much happier and more relaxed now."

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.