jwalker9328: Singapore hotels: 10 of the city's best

Keeping up with the latest Singapore hotels is a challenge.

New offerings include everything from leviathan package pads to boutique beauties, with the latter featuring a range of innovative design and hospitality concepts.

Arranged by area, here are 10 of the top Singapore hotels to open in the last few years.

Sentosa Island

Capella Singapore

The 112-key Capella is surrounded by 30 acres of forest. Poetically draped across the top of a grassy hill on Sentosa Island, looking over Palawan Beach and the South China Sea, Capella is a self-styled grande dame property.

Credit for this Singapore hotel's success goes to Lord Norman Foster's fine design work, which combines heritage components with sleek new-builds to create a neocolonial looker of a resort.

If sea views are a prerequisite, we suggest booking a suite. Constellation Rooms feature a Jacuzzi on the balcony -- some also with a partial sea view included in the soak -- while the villas and manors come with a plunge pool.

Each guest has access to a personal assistant, who is on call 24 hours a day.

1 The Knolls, Sentosa Island; +65 6377 8888; from US$460 per night; www.capellahotels.com/singapore

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W Singapore, Sentosa Cove

The W brand is unapologetically trendy. The moment you arrive at W and walk up the red-carpeted staircase or alight your super yacht at the resort's private berth, you feel like a superstar.

The hotel is a full sensory assault, with colors, textures, motifs, music and omnipresent design quirks all vying for oohs and aahs.

The choice of marina, pool or ocean views outside the windows isn't bad either.

The 1,338-square-meter lagoon pool has music piped in underwater. Above the surface a DJ spins regularly at the poolside Wet Bar, where neon glowing chairs and a lighthouse give the area its obligatory W vibe.

Four room types -- Away Room, Away Suite, Wow Suite, Extreme Wow -- all have a terrace plunge pool on their list of amenities, with the latter featuring an in-room DJ booth for a private shindig.

21 Ocean Way, Sentosa Island; +65 6808 7288; from US$305 per night; www.whotels.com/singapore

Mövenpick Heritage Hotel Sentosa

Lest you forget where you are, rooms facing Imbiah Lookout offer views of a 37-meter-high Merlion. Mövenpick's Sentosa hotel has two distinct wings -- the recently opened heritage wing and the contemporary wing. Between them there's a decent selection of room types to return to after a day at Universal Studios, a five-minute walk away.

The 62-suite heritage wing, formerly a 1940s British barrack base, has been carefully restored with a lot of the colonial architectural elements kept intact.

Over on the 129-key contemporary wing, 19 Onsen Suites come with an outdoor Japanese-style hot tub with retractable canopy, and two penthouse suites feature a rooftop infinity pool and a sea/skyline view combo.

On the F&B front, WOW (World of Whiskeys) by Waldhaus am See of St. Moritz carries more than 250 labels of fine -- and some very rare -- whiskies, along with food and cigar pairing.

23 Beach View, Sentosa Island; +65 6818 3388; US$141 per night; www.moevenpick-hotels.com

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Bay Area

Fullerton Bay Hotel

No need for heritage when you've got views like this. Not to be confused with the Fullerton Hotel, its heritage sister hotel dating to the late 1920s, the waterfront Fullerton Bay Hotel joined the Singapore hotel scene in 2010.

All rooms and suites feature a balcony or sun deck, all the better to see the views, which range from Merlion Park and Clifford Pier to Customs House.

For the quintessential Singapore panorama, the terraces of the bay-view rooms and suites offer a clear line of sight of Marina Bay Sands across the waters, with two Premier Bay View Rooms providing a Jacuzzi from which to enjoy the view.

Five themed suites take the pervading neutral-toned decor up a notch with decor inspired by the Lion CIty's Chinese, Perankan, Indian, Malay and colonial roots. The 25-meter rooftop pool offers the same US$55 billion view of Marina Bay Sands.

80 Collyer Quay; +65 6333 8388; from US$443 per night; www.fullertonbayhotel.com

Urban settings

The Quincy

Enjoy that minibar. You paid for it. Some travelers love volumes of options, others prefer their choices narrowed.

If you're the latter type, The Quincy takes away the headache of preference with its all-inclusive offering -- the first in Singapore, and rarely seen at a city hotel.

The full board package includes a one-way airport transfer, three meals a day, minibar replenished daily, unlimited Internet access, free flow espressos and latte, and cocktail and canapé hours from 6 to 8 p.m.

In line with the relative lack of choice, room types range ever so slightly between the 24-square-meter studio and the studio deluxe, larger by two square meters.

Chances are most guests staying on Mount Elizabeth are business types or shoppers with tunnel vision to Orchard Road just a five-minute walk away.

The glass-enclosed pool on the 12th floor makes for scenic exercise.

22 Mount Elizabeth; +65 6738 5888; from US$193 per night; www.quincy.com.sg

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Parkroyal on Pickering

Parkroyal's rooms are airy and bright with light wooden accents and clean straight lines. Managed by the Pan Pacific Hotels Group, Parkroyal is green -- inside and out.

The 367-room "hotel in a garden" has more than 15,000 square meters of gardens with more than 10 flora species on display, as well as waterfalls and planter walls. These solar-powered zero-energy sky gardens are a first for Singapore.

The hotel is adjacent to Hong Lim Park (more greenery) and with Chinatown, Bugis Village, Clarke and Boat Quays all within striking radius, retail and dining boxes can also be ticked.

Guests who foresee spending more time in than out may want to consider the Orchid Club rooms and suites, which come with benefits including champagne breakfast, afternoon tea, evening cocktails, Internet access, priority check in/out and access to two rooftop terraces.

3 Upper Pickering St.; +65 6809 8888; from US$226 per night; www.parkroyalhotels.com/pickering

Alternative designs

Wanderlust Hotel

Like your hotel understated? Wanderlust isn't for you. What happens when you bring together four homegrown creative firms -- three of them multi-disciplinary agencies with not a single previous hotel client -- and give them free reign to put together a hotel?

The aftermath of the creative overflow is succinctly captured in 29 unique rooms in Little India, collectively known as Wanderlust.

The lobby theme is "Industrial Glam." It's a wacky combination of vintage ads, shades of cement gray, wildly colored furnishings and exposed beams and air ducts for that intentionally unintentional look.

The rooms on the Eccentricity second floor are decked out in a single neon color, so you can pretend you're sleeping in a space capsule.

Is it Black & White rooms on the third story feature stenciled art installations in the Pop-Art rooms, "folded" ceilings in the "Origami" rooms with a choice of four colors to brighten the space.

Leaving the funkiest for last, the top Creature Comforts floor features rooms that look like they came out of the pages of a psychedelic dream book.

From monsters to typewriters and spaceships, the loft rooms are what the hotel humbly calls "whimsical."

2 Dickson Road; +65 6396 3322; from US$143 per night; www.wanderlusthotel.com

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New Majestic Hotel

For couples who don't like sharing their bubbles, there are three Loft rooms with side-by-side vintage bathtubs. Owned by the same lawyer-turned-hotelier as Wanderlust, New Majestic opened in 2008 and shares plenty of the nonconformist, loud design attitude of its sister property.

Thirty individualized rooms fall under four broad themes.

There's the Hanging Bed room, with oversized murals and seemingly suspended mattresses; Mirror room offers lots of voyeuristic ops; the exhibitionist-friendly Aquarium room has a glass-enclosed bathtub as its centerpiece.

Five designers from the worlds of fashion, furniture, graphics and film were invited to infuse their imaginations into five Lifestyle concept rooms, which range from a sexy party-den dubbed The Pussy Parlour to a minimalistic room with curvy surfaces and aptly called Fluid.

Adding to the New Majestic hodgepodge are space-specific installations and artwork provided courtesy of nine local artists.

31-37 Bukit Pasoh Road; +65 6511 4700; from US$194; www.newmajestichotel.com

Moon Hotel

The 30-square-meter Moonlight Suite has a balcony with a sunken tub for soaking under the stars. While some hotels are loud and proud, others cater more simply to a traveler's core needs -- a decent price tag for a clean, modern room and a comfy bed to return to at night.

Rising five floors from the colorful sights and sounds of Little India, Moon isn't the flashiest Singapore hotel on the block, but it does what it says on the label.

All 80 purple-hued rooms showcase what can be done with clever use of limited space. The Deluxe rooms, measuring a compact 18 square meters, are even able to squeeze in a long bath tub.

The only onsite restaurant serves just breakfast and cocktails, but the hotel's Little India location puts it at ground zero for hearty curries and other culinary adventures.

For shopping, the hotel is within walking distance of Bugis Street and Mustafa, the latter shopping center conveniently open 24/7.

23 Dickson Road; +65 6827 6666; from US$122; www.moon.com.sg

Wangz Hotel

Wangz' Halo lounge is one of Singapore's top rooftop bars. Housed in a conspicuous cylindrical structure in the hipster area of Tiong Bahru, Wangz offers contemporary rooms ranging from 26 to 47 square meters.

The hotel is also home to numerous nature-themed works of art, the majority of which were specially commissioned for Wangz and are collectively valued at SG$400,000 (US$323,050). Impressive for a hotel with just 41 rooms.

Six room types include the soak room, which allows guests to enjoy the city views from the window-side tub, while the balcony rooms open up onto additional outdoor living areas.

To experience the musically creative and artistic side of Singapore, we recommend dropping by the hotel's rooftop Halo lounge on Friday or Saturday evenings to catch live acoustic performances.

231 Outram Road; +65 6595 1388; from US$184; www.wangzhotel.com