Nobody noticed, but suddenly there was a tiger under the pool table of the most prestigious hotel in Singapore and in the whole of Southeast Asia. The guests said it was wild, the hotel manager said it had escaped from the circus. But wherever it came from, it refused to leave. The panicked guests hid, and the tiger met its end instead of tea, which was served at five o’clock in a hotel tailored to the five-year-old British colonial guests. The bewildered manager called a hunter to shoot five times at the tiger in the dark, hitting it once between the eyes. Life at the Raffles Hotel has returned to normal, but it has never been flat or dull in its 129-year history, making the Raffles one of the most mythical hotels in the world.
“Overlooking five miles – five whole miles – of masts and chimneys, my destiny along the coast led me to a hotel called Raffles Hotel, where the food is great and the rooms are bad. Let the traveller remember: eat at the Raffles and sleep at the Hotel de l’Europe,” wrote Rudyard Kipling the year the Raffles opened its doors. At the age of 22, he travelled around as a correspondent, writing his short stories, which were published in 1889 in From Sea to Sea.
It also included the above quotation, which did not exactly do the hotel credit, especially after Kipling’s fame for The Jungle Book in 1894 and his becoming the youngest Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1907. But the hotel’s owners were shrewd Armenians. Tigran Sarkies cunningly twisted Kipling’s words and turned them to his advantage. “Eat at Raffles, the food is excellent!” the advertising slogan suddenly blared.
The cunning Armenian brothers
Without Tigran Sarkies, one of the four brothers who looked for new business opportunities after the profitable Silk Road collapsed around 1860 and the Suez Canal opened in 1869, Raffles would not exist. And without Tigran’s brothers Martin, Aviet and Arshak, descendants of Persian merchants, there would have been no Sarkies Brothers hotel empire.
Next, Engineer Martin left his native Isfahan in what is now Iran for Penang, Malaysia. Nine years his junior, Tigran, followed him to Indonesia and set up shop in Java, but the business was not profitable. He set his sights on Singapore.
Sir Stamford Raffles, one of the founders of the British Empire, landed there in 1819 with an expedition and established a colony. The following year, the first Armenians settled there, but it is not known whether the ancestors of the four brothers were among them, although the Arstirkies and Aratun Sarkies were among those who owned most of Singapore’s businesses.
Tigran instinctively sensed that Singapore, with its new port at the crossroads of all Southeast Asian routes, could be a great opportunity for new business. At 23 years old, he knew nothing about the hotel business, but it seemed to him that a brighter future lay within.
He was not too hasty. First, in April 1884, he opened the first hotel, the Eastern Hotel, in Penang. The work was plentiful, the family ties were strong and he was soon joined by his 32-year-old brother Martin. They set up a company, called it Sarkies Brothers, and in 1885 they hired another hotel, the Hotel de l’Europe, and renamed it the Orient.
Martin was running the Eastern Hotel, Tigran Orient, but the work was too much again, so they lured his younger brother, 23-year-old Aviet, into the family business. He took over the management of the Oriental Hotel, the two older brothers extensively renovated the Orient and when it was finished in August 1889, so was the Oriental Hotel. It was not very profitable, but the brothers gave it up, and as his name had by now become a household word among the guests, they wanted to keep him. So they renamed the renovated Orient the Eastern & Orient Hotel, or E&O for short, and that’s the name it’s known by in Penang to this day.
But by then the brothers had been in Singapore for two years. Tigran and Martin rented a large ten-room house on the Singapore waterfront, still close to the city centre. As it had once been a boarding school for boys, they had to adapt it only partially, and in November 1887 they were already inviting people to the opening ceremony on 1 December. The advertisement was clear: we will do everything we can to make our guests comfortable and pleasant.
Before they turned around twice, the hotel was already too small for everyone who wanted to stay there, so just two years after opening, it got a new extension. It had 22 apartments with terraces and a view of the sea, which was only a few metres away at the time. The following year, Martin retired and returned to Isfahan, and Tigran and Aviet were joined by their youngest brother, then 20 years old.
Until then, Arshak had learned his trade at Raffles under Tigran’s guidance, but now he took over the management of the E&O Hotel. Tigran continued to steer Raffles with a firm hand, but Aviet went to Burma, or today’s Myanmar, and opened the Strand Hotel in Rangoon, or today’s Yangon, in 1901.
Ten years after opening the Eastrn Hotel, the Sarkies brothers were famous. In 1893, Sir Frank Swettenham told a joke that has gone down in history while recounting a celebratory lunch at the E&O: “In Perak, a teacher asked a boy who the Sakais were. The boy replied that they were the people who ran the hotels.” The Sakai people are one of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia.
The Sarkies brothers became prominent citizens of Raffles, not only managing the hotels in an exemplary manner, but also making friends with many of the guests and being regarded as important men with influential connections. But they did not stop working for it.
Raffles was continuously expanded and in December 1894 a new part was added, called the Palm Mansion. It had 30 apartments with verandas and was the furthest away from the hustle and bustle of hotel life, and was a favourite place for writers to stay.
Writers’ refuge
“Raffles represents all the myths of the exotic East!” wrote British writer and playwright Somerset Maugham, a regular at the Palm House, in the guest book. “Can we use this in our advertising campaign?” asked Franz Schutzman, the hotel manager at the time. “Sure, dude,” Maugham replied, and the phrase became as famous as Raffles.
Maugham fell in love with the hotel when he first set foot in it in March 1921. He usually sat under the tree in the left corner of the Paloma Mansion and worked until lunchtime. It was there and in Suite 78 – now, of course, named after him – that he is said to have revised his book Short stories: the trembling of the leaf, and where he wrote his play East of Suez.
He was still working at the hotel when he returned in 1925, when he wrote The casuarina tree, a collection of ticklish stories about the people he met on his travels. Including at the Raffles Hotel. Guests had the impression that he was just wandering around, pulling at their ears to see if he would hear of a scandal, which he would then publicise in one of his stories. He did not try to disguise his visibility in his writing, but this was resented by everyone in turn, even though he himself claimed that his characters were always special and exceptional in their own way.
In Raffles, he had more than enough material for his stories. He returned there thirty years later, in 1959. The hotel, of course, gave a warm welcome to its loyal clientele. Resentments were forgotten, no one was angry with him anymore, but Somerset Maugham quickly made sure that British expatriates were once again under pressure.
Franz Schutzmann, who had a lot of experience with him but had never been his victim, invited him to join the prestigious Tanglin club, of which he was a member. “When I look at these people, it no longer surprises me that we have such a shortage of home servers back home in England,” Maugham remarked caustically. Schutzmann was promptly refused a welcome to the club and Maugham was never invited back.
The hotel staff, on the other hand, loved him. One of them recalled how he always came to breakfast in just his shorts, “and then he worked. Once he asked me if I had read any of his books. I told him I couldn’t read.” Even when he learned, he didn’t read any.
The baggage handler was able to tell Belt that Maugham was very friendly to all the staff. “Guests were constantly asking him to sign their book. To keep things a bit organised, I brought him a pile of books every day. He loved to sit in that big wicker chair and sign them.”
Ten years before Maugham, Raffles was discovered by Hermann Hesse, the father of the Steppenwolf. He wrote in his diary: “The Raffles Hotel was expensive but good. The food is as bad as elsewhere.” He described in detail what it was like in this “big and boisterous hotel” in his book Journey to the East.
When he was in it, Raffles was already big. He was constantly expanding. When the Palm Mansion was added, it had 75 suites, and that’s when the Sarkies brothers were finally rewarded for their efforts: the hotel was taken under their wing by members of the royal family, aristocrats and dignitaries visiting Singapore.
But the Straits Times was not happy with it. They wrote that Singapore was missing a well-designed hotel that would offer truly world-class amenities. Tigran was a businessman and did not see the criticism as a blow to his self-importance, but as a starting point for change. So in 1897 he embarked on a major renovation and asked the architect R.A.J. Bidwell for help.
Two years later, he won the Straits Times. It now says that “the luxury building, with its excellent ventilation and spacious dining room, will become one of the most beautiful hotels in the East.”
The old central part of the building has been replaced by a beautiful three-storey Renaissance-style building. It housed a huge T-shaped dining room with a marble floor that could seat 500 guests. It took up the entire ground floor, but guests could still look up to the sky, as the wide staircase opened up to a glass ceiling.
There were 15 apartments on each of the two floors, two of which were reserved for Tigran. He and his family lived in the hotel. It also got a new large reading room and two study rooms, the only hotel rooms that the Straits Times journalist complained about.
He noticed that they were completely unsuited to conquering ladies. Because they had no curtains, anyone passing by could see in, which was extremely disturbing. Tigran should have asked a lady for advice on furnishing his workroom, the journalist concluded. Tigran immediately replied: once the workrooms were fully furnished, they would be suitable for seduction.
For now, guests strolled around the large, ornate veranda, which kept the sun from shining into the apartments and the rain from pounding on the window panes. To give guests real peace of mind, the bar and the billiard room were housed in a separate building.
Three bottles of gin for breakfast
The hotel now had 100 apartments, all lit by electricity. The Sarkies had their own steam generator, so every room had electric lighting and a fan, which was quite a luxury at the time.
The dining room was illuminated electrically for the first time at a gala dinner with 200 guests. A Straits Times reporter was most impressed by the dazzling lights that illuminated the hotel as dusk approached from the shore.
They used a lot of water. To ensure there was always enough water for both guests and the steam generator, they had their own reservoir with around 45,000 litres of water. Although there was no running water in the rooms, guests could always bathe, they just had to call the servants to bring them water. Of course, each guest’s room came with its own servants, who worked only for them.
The Sarkies had a sophisticated sense of luxury and sent limousines to pick up their pampered tenants in the harbour, showing them around and giving them everything they needed to find themselves in a city they didn’t know. For many, the hotel was interesting enough.
Austrian playwright Wolfgang Bauer decided one night to visit Singapore. The next day, he was on a plane. His seatmate told him about the Raffles Hotel, and he checked in. He did not move for three days. Then it was time to go home.
On the way to the airport, it occurred to him that it would be nice to see at least some of the sights of Singapore. He asked his taxi driver to take him to one. It was then that he heard the phrase that would later become famous: “When you were in Raffles, why didn’t you see more of Singapore?”. Bauer returned to the hotel two years later to have his television portrait taken.
Since its beginnings, the hotel has been a landmark in its own right. The dining room was not only its architectural jewel, but also its gourmet one. It was clear to Tigran from the moment it opened that Europeans were afraid of local food, however much they were attracted to the exotic, and its guests were most often picky Brits. He hired two French chefs and a chef to look after the Asian menu. On top of that, he opened a restaurant in the city centre where his guests could eat breakfast or lunch for free, so they didn’t have to go back to the hotel if they decided to wander around.
For the next three decades, formal dinners in the dining room, where tables were set with custom-made brown linen tablecloths and guests ate with silver cutlery, filled the pages of newspapers. They were always talked about as the most exquisite events in colonial Singapore.
For example, a New Year’s Eve party in 1900 was said to be the best any hotel in Singapore had ever offered, with half the town turning up for dinner and the other half for dancing.
The famous Danish archaeologist Pieter Vincent von Stein Callenfels, born in 1883, was not only a foodie, but also a drinker, as the Raffles staff knew all too well, as he was a regular customer. At 150 kilos, he drank gin in torrents: once he emptied three bottles at breakfast. It was a personal insult to him if the waiter brought him one beer because he wanted at least four, or even better twelve, bottles at a time.
He enjoyed food in the same way. He was remembered by everyone in the hotel for once eating everything on the menu, then ordering it again, only now eating from the last to the first item on the menu.
While Tigran was successfully leading Raffles, his brother Aviat was making his way in what was then Rangoon. The first time he visited, he noticed the beautiful location opposite the main pier on the Rangoon or Yangoon River. Unable to get it, he had to settle for a less attractive location in the centre of the city. He opened a hotel, but it was the least successful of all those opened by the Sarkies brothers, so he abandoned it ten years later when the riverside site finally became available. In 1901, the prestigious Strand rose opposite the harbour and became the landmark it is today.
A disgruntled Elizabeth Taylor
By the turn of the century, the Sarkies had become Asia’s leading hoteliers. They thrived where others had either burned out or dared not enter the field. They introduced fine dining, which had not existed before. Nothing was difficult for them, not even importing black caviar from the Caspian Sea.
At the beginning of the 20th century, however, Raffles was again given a new look, only this time a two-storey building was added. The ground floor was the site of Singapore’s first shopping centre, but it wasn’t until much later, in 1947, that Australian Doris Geddes opened her own clothes shop in the hotel. She called it Little Shop, ran it successfully for more than 30 years and earned the title of Singapore’s patron saint of fashion.
Elizabeth Taylor, then married to Mike Todd, once came to Raffles. She had heard rumours of the most exciting boutique in town, a veritable shrine to fashion, and of course she had to go. She bought an elaborate evening gown for a gala dinner, but in the process, the seams popped, in a most un-celebratory way.
The next day, she was heard shouting at Doris Geddes that she was selling third-rate quality clothes. “You shouldn’t have insisted on that dress,” Geddes was heard to reply. “It was too small for you.”
Elizabeth Taylor visited the hotel when it had regained its reputation, but she was not there around 1910, when it was at its peak. By then the Sarkies brothers were famous, but Tigran, who had run Raffles for 23 years, was tired and ill. He retreated to England and did not see the note in the Pinang Gazette: “Raffles is more than a hotel, it is an institution.”
He died in England in 1912, aged just 51. His brother Martin, nine years older, died the same year, leaving the family business in the hands of Aviet and Arshak.
Raffles continued to shine. It was constantly being renovated and added to: it got its own post office, its own bakery, a new pool hall and a limousine hire shop. It established itself as the centre of Singapore’s business and social life, where everyone who gave something of themselves had to stop by.
But like all other Asian hotels, Raffles could not escape the blow dealt to Asian tourism by the First World War. Europeans hardly travelled for pleasure anymore. Raffles got into trouble, but not fatal trouble, and other parts of the Sarkies brothers’ empire began to crumble.
Aviet and Arshak also tried to maintain excellence in Strand and E&O, but struggled. Well, at least Aviet did. He died in Paris in 1923, aged 61. When he was gone, the Rangoon Strand immediately went up for sale. In 1925, it passed into the ownership of a Rangoon restaurant owner and his cousin. During the Second World War, Japanese soldiers were billeted there. When Burma became independent in 1948, the hotel was completely abandoned, but was later restored and today, under the umbrella of GHM Hotels, it is once again boasting its former splendour.
After Aviet’s death, the family business passed into the hands of Arshak, the youngest of the four brothers. He was lively and generous, which would have been nice if it had not been excessive. He liked to gamble, he adored women and he always helped his friends when they got into trouble. He didn’t bother about who paid their bills and who didn’t.
In his mature years, when he ran the E&Q Hotel in Penang, he managed it more to entertain his friends than to make money. But in 1929, the stock market crashed in America and the world plunged into an economic depression. Now Arshak too had to look at how many unpaid bills he had in his drawer. When he saw the amount, it became clear to him that he would never be able to collect his debts. The sudden stress was so intense that he died in 1931, aged 62.
A bankrupt national monument
Two months after his death, Raffles declared bankruptcy. When the Sarkies brothers’ business was audited, it was found to be $3.5 million in debt, the largest bankruptcy ever seen in the colony. Nevertheless, Raffles, Strand and E&O are still among the leading hotels in Asia today.
The writer Richard Gordon loved Raffles, and even more so the jokes about the staff. One day in 1977, he came to reception and asked the receptionist if Mr Somerset Maugham was still in the hotel. The friendly receptionist immediately checked the guest list and, finding none, asked when Mr Maugham was due to arrive. He then offered to call him, even though Somerset Maugham had been dead for 12 years.
Tennis player Bjorn Borg struck up an unlikely friendship there. One sunny day, he was sitting in the Palm Mansion when he felt a touch on his shoulder. “She’s so cute. When she put her hand on my shoulder, I thought it was someone else. Imagine my shock when I saw those long hairy fingers!” he later recalled with a laugh, the moment he met Ah Meng Two, an orang-utan from a nearby zoo who had strayed a little onto the hotel floor.
In 1936, Charlie Chaplin arrived at the hotel in a rickshaw. The children immediately surrounded him and shouted a welcome, the rickshaw driver stood up and clapped, which was unusual, and Chaplin just continued on his way to the lobby, where he was greeted by the pleasant coolness of a fan and a chilled drink.
At the very least, he’s probably tried the famous cocktail called the Singapore Sling. Legend has it that it was invented by head barman Ngiam TongBoon after a guest requested a more interesting drink. The cocktail is basically gin, sherry and pineapple juice, but there are also additives that have never been revealed, but still spice up the drink today.
They were allowed to drink at the hotel without restrictions, but were not allowed to bring animals. The ban, of course, did not apply to Ethiopia’s ruler, Haile Selassie. So the powerful ruler brought along his pet, Elizabeth Grill, a petite Pekingese.
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia also had special wishes. Although the apartments were luxurious, they were too small for him, and his staff, who were preparing everything for his arrival, requested that some walls be torn down and four huge rooms be made to make him feel at home.
Raffles was declared a national monument in 1987. For its 130th birthday on 1 December 2017, it will be given a new look. The renovation of the façade will start in February, the main lobby and some rooms in August, and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2018.
New clothes for the old Savoy
Raffles was last updated in 1989. In two and a half years, $116 million was spent on the refurbishment, about the same as the investors planned to spend on modernising the jewel on British soil, London’s Savoy Hotel. The work was due to be completed in 16 months and took three years. In the end, the Savoy swallowed up €245 million.
Preserving history doesn’t come cheap, but the Savoy is as special as Raffles, which is of course named after Singapore’s founder, Sir Stamford Raffles. And just as Raffles boasted electric lighting, the Savoy flaunted “ascending rooms”, as they called the lifts, which no one else in Britain had.
Richard D’Oyly Carte saw them when he was travelling in America. Like Tigran Sarkies, he decided to build a luxury hotel, but the first one in London. He chose a plot of land next to the Savoy Theatre, which he built himself so that his friends William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan could perform their operas there.
When it opened on 6 August 1889, the Savoy was truly luxurious and, thanks to electric lighting, modern, and soon became even more notorious for its parties. In 1905, for example, the central hall was transformed into a Venetian canal. Invited to celebrate Edward VIII’s birthday, they sat on a large gondola surrounded by precious silk and covered with 12,000 carnations, their eyes lingering on swans resting on the surface of the water. As the sonorous voice of opera singer Enrico Caruso rang out, a baby elephant, weighed down by a giant cake, came bounding onto the deck. To ensure that no detail was overlooked, 400 handmade paper lanterns illuminated the space.
The guests enjoyed themselves, although the blue bloods preferred more moderate parties. At that time, Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth i were still quite at home in the Savoy. It was where Queen Elizabeth first appeared in public with her late husband Philip Mountbatten in 1946.
During World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill dined there regularly, and the writer Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, met in rooms 346 to 362.
Few of those who have made a difference in the past have ever crossed the Savoy’s threshold, so its guestbook is almost a who’s who through world history. “A hotel should always be modern and, if possible, one step ahead of the times” was the motto followed at the Savoy. Yet in the new millennium, the petite clientele have shunned it. It was, quite simply, outdated, so Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal decided to renovate it.
Is it acceptable to close the doors for 16 months, lay off workers, sell off 30 000 antiques and spend 112 million euros on works? It is, concluded the prince, who already knew in 2005, when he and the HBOS banking group bought the hotel for a reported €280 million, that he would not be able to live on his old glory for much longer.
Unfortunately, the initial assessment, which was made by eye because they couldn’t break through the walls while the guests were sleeping in the rooms, was far from reality. The more they worked, the more the Prince realised that the renovation would in fact cost him almost as much as the purchase.
The plumbing and electrical systems were outdated, the cooling systems were outdated and the asbestos found in the walls was not exactly to the liking of the five guests. They would not have been impressed by the external wall overlooking the River Thames if they had known that it had been ‘hanging’ from beams on the roof for a hundred years instead of standing on a solid foundation.
When it was decided that the Savoy would become the first hotel to have en-suite bathrooms, they converted the balconies into en-suite bathrooms. At that time, the new external wall was built in such a way that it had to be supported by 200 tonnes of steel supports during the current renovation, which started in December 2007. This time, the bathrooms have been moved inside to give the rooms back the magnificent views of London and the River Thames that the Impressionist painter Claude Monet depicted in his painting.
Every time they broke through a wall, they found something interesting, difficult and expensive, but renovating historical gems is never easy. There were fewer problems with the interior decoration, but even that wasn’t cheap. The hotel’s interior was renovated partly in the traditional British Edwardian style and partly in the Art Deco style.
For example, the “refresh” of the Beaufort bar with gold leaf cost €43 000. It is not known how much the 51 thousand pieces of porcelain crockery, custom-made by the British company Wedgwood to match the colour of the walls, cost, but it is clear that staying in the renovated hotel is much more expensive than it was in the old one.
The Raffles has 12 rooms named after celebrities who have stayed in them, the Savoy has 9. Marlene Dietrich’s room is always greeted with pink roses, as the German actress requested for herself in her time, and around 650 staff members ensure the comfort of modern guests. They all had to take a series of courses, including Charleston and waltz, because they wanted to restore not only the hotel but also its former atmosphere.
Yet Peter Dorelli, who has worked in the hotel bar for 38 years, claims the hotel has had its soul stolen. Once upon a time, it was neither lean nor too formal. “You greeted guests with Hi, how are you? Now employees are taught to say ‘Have a nice day. And everyone has to be the same,” he says. Guccio Gucci, the founder of the Gucci fashion empire, would certainly not belong there today, but he started his career as a dishwasher in 1897.
