Review: Conrad Bangkok (New Rooms)

Two Cabins, Two Hiltons: Introduction
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Review: Hilton Sukhumvit Bangkok
Review: Conrad Bangkok
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After checking out from the Hilton Sukhumvit Bangkok, I made my way over to the Conrad Bangkok. The Conrad Bangkok is located along Witthayu Road (but there were many wires overhead), with the nearest BTS being Phloen Chit station.

With the roads choked with traffic, I decided to head over to the Conrad Bangkok via BTS instead of Grab (which is surprisingly affordable).

From the BTS, it takes around 5-10 minutes to get to Conrad Bangkok by foot. There is a shuttle bus service available and I’ll talk more about that below.

From the Witthayu Road, you will actually enter the Conrad Bangkok through All Seasons Place. An office building cum shopping centre that is connected directly to the hotel. If you are entering from the main entrance of All Seasons Place, simply look for the UOB ATMs and you will find the side entrance to the Conrad Bangkok from there. Alternatively, just follow the signs to the hotel lobby.

The Conrad Bangkok has undergone a renovation since I first visited back in 2017. The lobby has changed a lot and the check-in desks are now tucked away in a corner. When I arrived at about 3.00 pm, the lobby was deserted with no one checking-in. Throughout my one-night stay at the hotel, I could tell that occupancy was not very high that day.

A day before my arrival, I received an email from the hotel and they kindly agreed to my request to not have a suite upgrade but instead be in their newly renovated rooms. Ah, the things I do for The Milelion.

I already knew that I have been upgraded through the Hilton Honors app as I used the Digital Check-in function to choose my room, a King Hilton Premium Room. (which so happened to be a corner room as well.

For my stay at the Conrad Bangkok, I used the complimentary Hilton stay voucher which came with the AmEx KrisFlyer Ascend credit card. You do not have to be the main cardholder to utilize the voucher, all you need to do is perform your booking online on the dedicated AmEx KrisFlyer Ascend Hilton website and present both the KrisFlyer Ascend card that you used for the booking and hardcopy voucher upon arrival. You will also enjoy the full benefits of your Hilton Honors elite status for this stay, but it will not be count towards any stay/night count and you will not receive the Diamond/Gold 1,000 MyWay points bonus. 

My room was already ready when I reached the hotel, I was given my room cards and off I went to check out the brand new rooms. He confirmed that I can enjoy breakfast either in the restaurant or the lounge courtesy of my Hilton Honors status. I was super paiseh when the guest services manager walked me from the front desk to the lifts as I’m simply not used to this and frankly, do not really like it when this happens. (yes I’m weird that way)

The lifts were keycard controlled and you will only have access to the public areas as well as the floor your room is on. Plus the Executive Lounge is you have access to it.

I was assigned Room 2721, which I as I mentioned earlier, a King Hilton Premium Room. The corridors of the hotel were touched up a little but did not change much in my opinion.

For those who have read Louis’s review of the Conrad Bangkok or have stayed at it in their old rooms, you will remember how old and tired the rooms were. My goodness, when I opened the doors I was pretty happy with what they have done to their rooms.

First, you’ll see that the main light panel and obligatory Do Not Disturb/Housekeeping buttons are to your left (or in some rooms, the right). Unlike many other hotel rooms, this room did not need your room card to be inserted to trigger the power in the room. The room has motion sensors to detect if someone is in the room and will turn on/off power when you leave.

You will be greeted by a small walkway when you enter the room and to your left, is a mini walk-in wardrobe in which your luggage could be placed in.

The mini walk-in wardrobe was pretty cool in my opinion and there are windows which you could close if you did not want to look into it from the main bedroom. The usual amenities of bathrobes, hangers (thankfully not the irritating kind with no proper hook), bedroom slippers and other amenities are found here.

I love that the slippers were placed in drawstring bags instead of the standard plastic wrapping, which brings up the level of luxury of the Conrad up a notch. The slippers were of good quality.

As you walk further into the room, you will find the mini bar hidden in a cabinet and on top of that cabinet you will find both complimentary bottles of water and overpriced Evian water bottles. Thankfully, the Conrad Bangkok has a bottle holder for the glass bottled water which made it easier to grip.

The sleeves are available for purchase from the front desk should you wish to take them home. They are a good insulator for ice-cold beer bottles. (not that I actually placed ice-cold beer bottles in them)

The rest of the mini-bar was your usual mini-bar stuff. Overpriced snacks, drinks, and condoms. Yes, even those are overpriced. I was slightly disappointed that there was no Nespresso machine in these newly renovated rooms. There was a French Press available though with the coffee from Boncafe, but I’m too young to wait for my coffee to brew.

Now, onto the main part of the room. It was simply gorgeous in my opinion and the window shades automatically lower and raise themselves when you entered the room. *gasp*

The beds were amazing and I had a very good sleep and had to force myself to get out of it for breakfast. Yes, the cute little Conrad Elephant is yours to take home.

These newly renovated rooms are simply amazing with souped-up features such as the much higher definition flat screen television and Bluetooth capabilities which saw me blasting emo punk rock music in the room as I mourned being single. The music came from both the television and the speaker in the bathroom, making sure I was able to fully immerse myself in emo music no matter where I was. Oh and the hotel phone on the work desk was also cordless.

There was a small sitting area where a fruit platter, consisting of two bananas, was placed and less than 5 minutes from the time I entered the room, someone knocked on my door with a small plate of Thai snacks. It’s these small details which make the Conrad Bangkok stand out in my opinion. The hotel could have just left the snacks in the room early in the morning but they chose not to, which is pretty neat.

Oh and I loved the Thai snacks too. The small ang ku kueh-ish “apple” and “pear” was amazing. I didn’t eat the bananas though. (sorry not sorry)

The bedside controls were pretty nifty but you had to stretch your body quite a bit to reach them. Ah, first world problems. Also, the pillows were huge. They were longer than my entire torso and no, I do not have a short body.

The side table had the standard set up of a hotel telephone, writing materials, and television remote. The controls for the blinds and blackout curtains can also be found on the left bedside panel.

On the right bedside panel, there is a dimmer for the hanging lamp and USB-A ports (5V/2.1A) available for charging your devices. International power ports are also available for charging your power hungry devices.

A pillow menu was available on the left nightstand and these can be requested from housekeeping. Miracle pillow anyone?

The view from the room wasn’t that great in my opinion. One thing I did not like was that the windows weren’t heavily tinted which meant that if you were sitting at the work desk, you will feel the heat creeping into the room. The air conditioning in the room also did not work well for some reason and the temperature was just fine but not freezing cold as how I would have wanted it to be in the day when the temperature outside was 36 degrees Celsius.

Speaking of the work desk, the chair was from Herman Miller and it was super comfortable to sit in. On the wall of the work table was a panel with even more USB-A ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, full-sized HDMI port, and the Bluetooth button to activate the in-room Bluetooth from the TV.

Now for everyone’s favourite part of the review, the bathroom tour. Honestly, this was just your average bathroom but it was of a good size and had a separate bathtub and shower. The water pressure is amazing and you will definitely run the risk of using more water than you should for a shower. Whoops. The towels were large and fluffy too.

The toilet bowl are the Japanese style ones with a bidet and I’m not ashamed to admit I had fun with it.

Bath amenities are now provided by Shanghai Tang and they have a nice tea-ey scent to them but I prefer the old Aromatherapy Associate branded ones.

Toothbrushes, shaving kits, and mouthwash are available and for some reason, the housekeeping suspected that I was balding and did not need to wash my hair and gave me 4 bottles of bath gels instead of the usual combination of Shampoo, Bath Gel, Conditioner and Body Lotion. Thankfully the housekeeping carts were outside my room so I simply popped outside and asked for some shampoo from the housekeeping staff.

A bath elephant (?) was available beside the bath tub for kids/adults who actually still play with physical toys.

After scrutinizing the room, I got pretty peckish and headed up to the lounge for Afternoon Tea. For your reference, here’s the schedule for meal times in the Executive Lounge which was in the welcome letter that was given to me at the Front Desk:

The Executive Lounge is located on the 29th floor and was a stunning place with ample seating available. This was my first time accessing the lounge as back in 2017 when I first visited the property, I was only a Hilton Honors Gold member and did not get upgraded to an Executive Room.

There was a separate lounge area right across the main lounge but there was no food in there and that would probably be the overflow room if the main lounge gets too crowded.

A small business centre was also available at the back of the lounge with a few PCs available. Bathrooms were also available in the lounge.

When you enter the lounge, you will immediately be greeted by the lounge staff who will ask you for your drink orders. In this lounge, all the drinks are kept inside the kitchen so if you just want to grab a can of coke and leave you’ll have to request it from the lounge staff. I would have preferred a fridge being available where we can just grab a drink and head off somewhere else, but I guess this is how they enforce the “no food & drinks outside of lounge” policy.

The afternoon tea spread was pretty decent and if you had stuffed your face with breakfast that morning and did not feel like leaving the hotel, you could just wait for afternoon tea for “lunch”. Cut fruits, cakes, and desserts were available. Also, both the Conrad and Hilton had this weird fetish for spinach quiches.

I asked for an Iced Latte which was served promptly and just watched the Bangkok traffic jams 29 stories below me while having some carrot cake. Mmm. Not long after stuffing my face with some cake, it was time for evening cocktails. The spread was good and could have been a dinner substitute if you wanted it to be.

Here was the food which was on offer:

While I appreciated that the food was individually portioned, the way it was placed in the steamer/food warmer it made it difficult to use the tongs and most people ended up using their hands to take the bowls out. Either that, they used the tongs to pick out the food and left the empty bowls in the food warmer.

For the alcoholics, champagne is sadly not available but they do serve Prossecco. Thai beers and Heineken are available and you could request for hard liquor and cocktails from the lounge staff.

After having some light bites, I went out for dinner and decided to take the shuttle bus to the BTS. It was hot, I wasn’t going to walk if I could avoid it.

The shuttle bus timings can be found on the table in your room. Here it is below:

The shuttle bus service is actually a shared service with the office workers at All Seasons Place. It is the most awkward bus ride you will ever take as there are only 3 seats which are reserved for guests of the Conrad Bangkok and they have a paper stuck on them saying “Reserved for Conrad Bangkok”. Moreover, there is a red barrier rope separating those three seats from the rest of the bus and the concierge will unhook it when the bus arrives at the porch of the Conrad and usher you onboard. Talk about awkward.

From Phleon Chit BTS you can board the shuttle back to the hotel by showing your Conrad room key if needed at this bus stop:

The next morning, I had the option of having breakfast in the Executive Lounge or the restaurant at level 2. I chose to dine in the lounge and you should definitely do so too to if you had the choice so as to avoid the crowds downstairs.

The spread was pretty good and I was tempted to not head down to the restaurant for a second breakfast. Being the glutton that I was, I still went down to the restaurant in the end. Here was what was on offer at breakfast in the lounge:

Oh, there was an egg station too and I loved the way they cooked the omelette.

Coffee and tea can be requested from the lounge staff who will then bring it to you. The tangerine juice that was available was excellent and you should definitely try it either in the lounge or restaurant. I assembled a badly plated breakfast platter of a little bit of everything and wolfed it down and rushed off to the restaurant for round 2.

Compared to the lounge, the spread at the restaurant is definitely larger. The egg station in the restaurant even had Thai Omelettes available and I’m terribly disappointed with myself that I did not order it. The spread is pretty much similar to most other Asian hotels, with the typical eggs, sausages baked beans, salad bar etc. The stand out was definitely the Thai Omelette which smelled amazing.

A crepe station was available and so was Nutella, go wild.

The restaurant also had a noodle station (as with every other Asian hotel restaurant) however the kuey teow was pretty normal in my opinion. Save the space for other things!

I did not manage to take a picture at the gym because it was so crowded when I visited, but it was big enough and well equipped. There is also a nice swimming pool and again, this too was crowded when I visited.

On the day that I was checking out, I managed to secure a late check-out of 4pm during check-in probably due to the low occupancy at the hotel on the day I was staying in. As my flight was at 9pm, I stayed in the lounge until 6pm to do up some work and thankfully the lounge staff allowed me to partake in evening cocktails. (which isn’t a given)

The food on offer was completely different and I actually enjoyed what was on offer on the second evening:

One thing that made me chuckle like a weirdo while taking my food was how they named the otah “Fish Curry Custard”.

Concluding Thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed the one-night stay I had at the Conrad Bangkok. Its newly renovated rooms are definitely much nicer than the old tired rooms and this refresh definitely added some life to the Conrad Bangkok. I will definitely return here in the future and will definitely stay in a room which confers me Executive Lounge benefits as I find the lounge to be excellent.

With a great lounge, excellent staff, and a great location, the Conrad Bangkok is probably the most bang for your buck Hilton property in Bangkok. Now if only I can afford to pay for a night at the Waldorf the next time I’m in Bangkok…