Naumi Hotel

Naumi Hotel

On Seah Street, a short strip of shophouses and restaurants running between Beach Road and North Bridge Road in the Civic District, directly behind the Raffles and five minutes on foot from Esplanade MRT, a ten-storey building wrapped in steel mesh and climbing vines stands where the Metropole, a budget hotel remembered mainly for its herbal chicken restaurant, used to be. Surya Jhunjhnuwala, managing director of Hind Group, whose father and uncles built their careers on 500- and 600-room hotels, bought the Metropole in April 2006 for S$18 million, spent another S$10 million converting it, and opened Naumi in September 2007 with 40 rooms and a stated plan to fix everything he disliked about staying in large chains. A multimillion-dollar rebuild, completed in late 2013 with interiors by White Jacket, took it to 73 rooms, four of them suites, and the hotel is now a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, run by Naumi Hospitality, the family company that has since taken the name to New Zealand and Australia. The lobby is dark timber floors and polished metal trim, the walls carry a commissioned collection of Singaporean art, and the front-desk staff wear uniforms by the local label DEPRESSION, capes with gold collar clips for the women, split tailcoats for the men. Standard Habitat rooms are compact, as most rooms in this part of the city are, with floor-to-ceiling glass, seven-layer bedding in 400-thread-count Egyptian cotton, Malin + Goetz in the bathroom, and soundproofing designed by a Parisian acoustic specialist. The Patio rooms have private terraces, and the two signature suites lean hard on their references, the Gabrielle & Camellia in Chanel’s black and white, the Eden & Nirwana in Warhol’s pop colour. An entire floor, behind a glass door only its guests can open, is reserved for women travelling alone, with hair straighteners, yoga mats and sanitary products in each room. On the ground floor, Rang Mahal Restaurant & Bar, the Jhunjhnuwala family’s long-running Indian restaurant, moved in during 2025, and on the tenth floor Cloud 9 is a modest infinity pool and bar facing the towers of the CBD. This is a city hotel for people who intend to be out in the city, small enough that the staff learn your face by the second morning, close enough to the National Gallery, Chijmes and Bugis that taxis become optional. The design is of its moment, 2013 boutique with its Chanel and Warhol rooms, Apple TVs and three small gyms, more playful than restrained, and some of it is starting to show its age, but the bones are good and the address is better. It suits the woman travelling solo for work who wants the women’s floor and a proper dinner downstairs, the couple using Singapore as a three-night eating stop on the way to somewhere else, and anyone who wants the Raffles neighbourhood without the Raffles bill. You should not come if you want a resort pool to spend the afternoon beside, generous square footage at entry level, or the kind of quiet, considered interiors a newer boutique hotel might offer; the pool is small and fills at happy hour, the windows do not open, and the rooms are built for sleeping in. You should come for the location, the women’s floor, the dal and tandoor on the ground floor, and an hour on the roof once the evening storm has cleared. The short version: A 73-room boutique hotel on Seah Street, behind the Raffles, converted from the old Metropole in 2007 and rebuilt in 2013, with a women-only floor, a rooftop infinity pool, and the owning family’s Indian restaurant on the ground floor.