When borders closed early last year as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe, One Farrer Hotel - like every other hospitality player in Singapore - saw its business disappear overnight with foreign tourist and business arrivals plunging to almost zero.
But the five-star hotel, which is affiliated to the adjoining Farrer Park Hospital near Little India, quickly pivoted to meet new opportunities that came its way.
The result, said general manager Gilbert Madhavan, is that despite a revenue drop of 60 per cent, it has managed to stay in the black. None of its staff has suffered a pay cut nor had to take no-pay leave.
He credited it to the quick thinking of the company's chairman, Professor Maurice Choo, who put together a "transformational team" comprising the hotel's top executives last February.
They met through video conferencing weekly to discuss ideas to generate income.
"Everything had come to a standstill, there was no more business. Tour groups couldn't come in and meetings were cancelled. We had 120 meetings booked at the time, but all of them were up in the air," recalled Mr Madhavan.
"We had to think outside the box not just to survive, but also to move to a post-Covid-19 world."
One of the things the team looked at was how safe distancing rules were affecting the food and beverage business.
The hotel's ground-level buffet restaurant Escape was initially turned into an a la carte restaurant, but faced an uphill task filling its 160 seats.
It closed in October and the space was leased to the Les Amis Group, which in December opened Socieaty, a multi-cuisine eatery that housed its brands such as Mui Kee Congee, Nam Nam, Pepperoni and Tarte by Cheryl Koh under one roof.
The hotel clinched the deal by offering a five-year lease with a "relatively low" five-figure base rent plus a share of the gross turnover.
"It's a win-win. If they do well, we do well too," said Mr Madhavan.
To service guests, Escape reopened last month in a former function room beside the swimming pool on level six. It has 40 indoor and 40 alfresco seats with a compact menu of items like lobster laksa, tomahawk steak and roast pork salad.
The hotel's more revolutionary idea, however, was to turn its five suites and eight rooms on level 20 into private dining venues collectively called Nest At One Farrer. A sixth suite became the kitchen.
Menus start at $68 a person for a three-course lunch to $158 for a five-course dinner with Asian and Western dishes - for a minimum of five persons and a maximum of eight to a room.
The Presidential Suite, which is named Calla Lily Villa, has a minimum dining spending of $2,500.
Bespoke menus can be arranged and hosts can stay the night after the dinner if they spend a minimum of $700 to $2,5000, depending on the suite. Or they can just top up the difference.
"As the villas are designed like homes, it's like inviting guests to your penthouse," said Mr Madhavan.
He added that almost all the rooms have been booked for the first few days of Chinese New Year, with many hosts opting to stay over so they do not have to worry about drink driving.
Since the concept started in August, it has been used for conferences and wedding dinners, among other events.
A wedding couple took up the entire floor and dressed up the corridor for the occasion. Guests were safely distanced in the rooms and wedding dinner rules allowed only the hosts to interact with them.
Another group of delegates attending a medical conference arrived for dinner at 6.30pm before going on video-conferencing platform Zoom at 9.30pm to greet their counterparts in the United States, who were starting their work day.
The hotel has explored other revenue streams too.
In April, when there was a bed crunch in hospitals with the number of Covid-19 patients rising, the hotel doubled as a "hospitel".
It worked with the Ministry of Health from April to June to use its rooms for patients.
Carpets, artefacts and artworks, where the virus could linger, were removed. Staff were sent for training at the hospital next door, as they had to serve meals to patients and clean the rooms.
Said Mr Madhavan: "Cleaning hospital rooms is different from hotel rooms as touch points need to be wiped down and sanitised thoroughly. The staff had to wear personal protective equipment suits and avoid physical contact with one another."
At the same time, the hotel also became a swabbing centre.
Four mobile stations were set up in the spacious driveway and staff assisted doctors and nurses in swabbing foreign workers.
After the "hospitel" exercise, they decided that their rooms should take on a different look, in keeping with the Covid-19 era.
A hotel-within-a-hotel concept called Mint Hotel was conceived, with 70 per cent of its existing 249 rooms renovated within three months to include anti-bacterial and anti-virus flooring, wallpaper, blinds, fabrics and ceiling paint. Hanging lamps were removed.
Mr Madhavan said: "We anticipate many future travellers will be looking for hygienic and sanitised rooms. But for those who still want the old style, we kept 30 per cent of the rooms with their carpets and chandeliers."
Coming up next is a Pillow Lab, a facility that can sanitise 55 pillows at a time using ultraviolet light. It is slated to open early next month as an independent business that other hotels and serviced apartments can tap.
Also in the pipeline next month is a rebranded conference centre called Hive that links guests to those outside virtually.
It boasts a studio capable of generation a three-dimensional effect so off-site participants can feel like they are also in the room.
Similarly, other hotels like InterContinental Singapore in Middle Road are also tapping the virtual conference market.
Last month, it launched a hybrid studio called The Green Room that is equipped with an LED display wall and a 180-degree green screen stage for virtual meetings and presentations. There is also space for a live-studio audience of 30 people.
Companies can book the studio for a day from $9,600 with options for coffee breaks and lunch.
Hotels like these are reimagining themselves and overhauling their spaces, offering suite dining and virtual conferencing, because they do not envisage a return to the way things were any time soon.
Said One Farrer Hotel's Mr Madhavan: "Tourists are not coming back this year, so you need to prepare for the long haul. And three or four years later, if we find that we need to change again, then we will do so."