Travel: Ex post facto - the Fullerton, Singapore.

It's easy to smile and chat to the staff – not only because they are universally nice, friendly and helpful but because even before you have walked to the unusually unimposing reception desk you already feel like these people are your own team.

Yes, if you are the sort of person who thinks that service industry staff have to be put down at every opportunity, you might feel like behaving dismally – but for the rest of us, it's like coming home after a long trip – and that's the first time you stay.

But very few people stay once, it seems. Forget all the slogans of the big chains, The Fullerton really is one of the world's best hotels.

Does it have six stars? No – but it is right in the financial district of Singapore, with Boat Quay and the amazing restoration that is Clarke Quay within five minutes' walk.

Does it provide, as does one new entrant to the market, a chauffeured Bentley from the airport? No, but it does have a classic grey Rolls Royce from the days when Rolls Royces were the real thing, made just down the road from the Grosvenor, mentioned above. And in any case, anyone who understands cars knows that one drives one's own Bentley and has a driver for a Rolls Royce.

Does it qualify as a “boutique hotel?” No: that would suggest that someone has spent some time making the place prissy.

Is it a rival to Raffles? No: since the old dame's most recent purchase and renovation, to our mind, Raffles has lost its individuality and charm, it's a shopping mall with (admittedly rather nice) bedrooms and every square foot of the once airy building that was lovely just to walk around is now made to “sweat” with advertising, display cabinets and booth-sized shops in, seemingly, every available space. The Fullerton doesn't press you to be buying something every time you turn around.

So why does The Fullerton keep winning awards, and why to customers keep coming back?

It all comes back to that same thing: it's somewhere that, even after a horrid journey, you feel like you have come home to.

From the Courtyard / Lobby tea room to the café / deli in the old post office counter, from the riverside brasserie to the Post Bar cocktail bar, from the immense columns in the five-storey-high atrium to the unusually (for Asia Pacific) large baths in the rooms The Fullerton simply oozes class.

So how did it get this way? Surely it must be a hundred years old to achieve this standard.

Remarkably, The Fullerton, as a hotel, opened on 01.01.01 although it is housed in a neo-classical structure built in 1928 and which survived – as did much of Singapore's waterfront – the Japanese occupation. The building took nine years to complete and became Singapore's then largest building.

It has been The General Post Office (from 1928 - 1996), The Singapore Club and The Chamber of Commerce and the Offices of The Inland Revenue and the Finance Minister. It was the place where the British holed up in the face of the advancing Japanese and the place where Independence was declared. Its site is where Fort Fullerton guarded the entrance to the Singapore River for a hundred years. And as its neighbours have fallen to the wrecking ball, The Fullerton has not only survived, it has developed a special place in the hearts of Singaporeans. Its construction fits with two grand buildings that sit across the River, the Supreme Court and City Hall – the de facto local government until Singapore became independent in 1958.

You walk out of the front door and have a choice of turning left, which brings you straight to Bank of China and HSBC, jostling for position here as they do in Hong Kong with other banks surrounding them, go straight along the waterfront where you soon come to Harry's Bar where Nick Leeson cavorted before sinking Barings' Bank, or turn right across the cast iron bridge to the splendour of the Parliament building, the Supreme Court, City Hall and others.

Singapore isn't Hong Kong, although many would like it to be. It isn't a police state, although many like to pretend that it is such. But Singapore is clean, it is ordered and it is successful.

Singapore has become, according to some reports, a bigger private banking centre than Switzerland. Its property market has begun to boom again – although one wonders how that will fare given the global slowdown in property prices that is already gathering pace. Singapore has huge local wealth – it was the principle trading port for Malayan rubber and tin and its government invests massive sums in infrastructure – money which it earns from commerce and investments rather than from high levels of taxation. It has one of the world's busiest ports (some say it is the world's busiest) and it has one of the world's most rapidly growing numbers of super-rich.

And at the heart of this is the financial district and a carefully managed small slice of heritage that has not been concreted over to provide a late 20th Century skyline. And at the heart of the financial district is The Fullerton. The Fullerton's own marketing material calls it “The Heart of Singapore.”

That's wrong. For as the world's money men beat a path to the precocious young lion's rapidly growing financial services industry, the Fullerton is increasingly at the heart of the world's wealth management industry.

It's difficult to get a room at The Fullerton at certain times of the year, and that situation will develop as more people realise they can walk to work from one of the last hotels in the world that one can truly walk into and say “I'm home.”

For here, there are no “guests” - just “residents.” You don't “stay” at the Fullerton, you “live” here.

If you are lucky enough.