Author: Shane

REVIEW: W Bangkok, Spectacular Room

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As the year was coming to a close and in need for a few more qualifying nights to renew my SPG Gold status, I booked a night with W Bangkok for a weekend stay after a couple of working days in the capital city of Thailand. W Bangkok is located along the commercial zone of Sathorn, near the Chong Nonsi BTS station. A stone’s throw away from Silom, the location is great for those who needs easy access to the city centre where Siam Paragon, Central World and the likes are located, but quite a hassle if you wish to café hop along the Sukhumvit area. This Starwood property is a Category 4 hotel, the lowest category for the W Hotels brand (there are only eight Category 4 W hotels globally, with four in Asia). The hotel runs 31 floors high, featuring 403 guest rooms and 34 suites. For this stay, I booked myself into the entry level Wonderful Room. Being a SPG Gold member, I was upgraded to the Spectacular Room instead. And of …

FLIGHT REVIEW: Singapore Airlines A330-300 Regional Business Class, Taipei – Singapore

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Singapore Airlines / 28 Aug 17 / A330-300 / SQ879 TPE-SIN / Business Class While planning for my weekend trip to Taipei I realised that Sunday evening flights back to Singapore were getting really expensive, so I decided to burn some miles as a treat to get home on Singapore Airline’s business class, partly to review the SilverKris lounge at Taipei airport which hardly had any reviews online (for good reasons). Some people may not believe that short haul business class tickets are worth burning miles on, but I beg to differ. At 27,500 miles (each way) for a saver redemption (and this is after SQ scrapped the 15% discount for online redemptions), I do feel that the Singapore-Taipei sector is still worth the miles given that it’s the farthest SQ sector within the Hong Kong/Taiwan/South China region. By contrast, Singapore-Male is comparable in terms of flight time, but it will cost you another 7,500 miles in business class. In terms of value per mile, given that SIN-TPE business class tickets on SQ trends around …

LOUNGE REVIEW: Cathay Pacific Lounge – The Wing, Hong Kong International Airport

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On a whirlwind business trip to Shanghai and Hong Kong, I managed to spend some time at the very much acclaimed Cathay Pacific lounge at their home base – Hong Kong International Airport. Cathay Pacific has a ridiculous number of lounges in HKIA itself – a grand total of six, of which two have dedicated first class lounges. If you need a whirlwind introduction, Lounge Buddy has a handy guide here. For this trip I went with The Wing, Cathay’s flagship lounge which was recently renovated. The double-storey lounge is located closest to the immigration counters, on the left right after immigration and security right across gate 2. The lounge has two sections – one for business class and oneworld sapphire members, accessible through the entrance opposite gate 2, while the first class and oneworld emerald section can be accessed directly to the left once you clear immigration into the upper floor. For business class passengers this can be quite a walk (maybe five minutes), which was the case for me. Upon approaching the lounge …

REVIEW: SilverKris Taipei Lounge

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Singapore Airlines has its very own lounge at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport Terminal 2. While some people may find it odd that SQ operates its own lounge at an airport where there’s only two flights a day, frequent flyers will recall that SQ used to run its Singapore-US services via Taipei until the 2000s, and this lounge had a far better service proposition back then for Singapore Airlines’ very own premium customers. Star Alliance gold members have no lack of lounges to choose from at Taoyuan International Airport. With home carrier EVA Air operating out of Terminal 2, Star Alliance gold members and business class passengers on the Star Alliance carriers can either hop into EVA Air’s several lounges or to the Singapore Airlines lounge. So let’s focus a little on the Singapore Airlines lounge. Tucked away on the fourth floor, a level above the retail level, the lounge is well sign-posted even though the entrance is not very obvious. The lounge is one of the smallest out of all the SQ SilverKris lounges around …

Qantas’ Kangaroo Route to fly via Singapore from 26 March 2017

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Five years after moving out the transit point of its flagship Sydney-London route to Dubai, Qantas is now moving the layover stop back to Singapore from next year. Along with the shift of the stopover point, Qantas will also increase services to Melbourne to twice daily, including a daily A380 service. Qantas and Singapore shares a historic link, given that the Australian carrier operated its first international service to Singapore way back in 1935, becoming one of the oldest airlines to operate into Singapore. In 2012, Qantas and Emirates became strategic partners, which saw Qantas moving its transit point for Australia-London flights to Dubai. This is so that Qantas customers travelling from Australia could benefit from connecting to Emirates’ network of over 30 destinations in Europe in Dubai. With the move to Dubai, Qantas also suspended flights to Frankfurt via Singapore in 2013, and focused on only point-to-point destinations between Australia and Asia. In its announcement of the return, Qantas also announced the extension of the partnership with Emirates, which means that Qantas and Emirates …