SINGAPORE: In 1973, two years after Hotel Miramar opened along Havelock Road, a 17-year-old Florence Tan started work there as a room attendant.
It was a big year for tourism in the island nation: Singapore was hosting the 1973 Southeast Asian Peninsular Games for the first time, the Singapore Zoological Gardens held its official opening, and officials announced that Singapore had reached its "million-tourists-a-year mark".
For Mdm Tan, her introduction to working life tidying and servicing rooms at the four-star hotel was a whirlwind. Hotel Miramar has over 340 rooms.
"It was a bit tough. But as I worked longer, I began to love. Because the people are all very nice," said Mdm Tan, who is now 69 and a senior housekeeping executive.
Her colleagues, bosses and guests have become family, and Hotel Miramar, her second home, she said.
Although she had hoped to work there until 75, she will have to find another job when the hotel closes at the end of October.
"These are all the memories that are inside my heart," she said. "So it feels sad to let go."
Mdm Tan is among 28 staff members who have spent at least a decade of their lives at the hotel. She spoke to CNA, along with five other staff members, in a group interview at the hotel on Tuesday (Sep 2).
Hotel Miramar announced that it would cease operations on Aug 29 after more than fifty years of business. A total of 108 employees will be laid off.
"This difficult decision was made after careful and comprehensive evaluation of the hotel's long-term business outlook," the hotel and the Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union (FDAWU) said in a joint statement.
The hotel said it had engaged early with the union and would provide fair retrenchment packages, with additional payouts to recognise long-serving employees. Employees with less than two years of service will also receive an ex-gratia payment.
The management has "gone above and beyond its collective agreement to support impacted employees" to ensure that workers' welfare is prioritised, FDAWU added.
The union also said it would work closely with the hotel to help affected employees secure new jobs by connecting them to the labour movement's network, such as NTUC's Employment and Employability Institute (e2i).
According to the National Heritage Board website Roots.gov.sg, the hotel opened in 1971 and was one of the few hotels established in the area during the construction boom in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Mdm Tan recalls those days as the hotel's heyday.
"Occupancy was always full-house," she said. "Everybody was busy."
Over the years, Hotel Miramar played host to countless weddings and corporate events and gained a reputation as an independent operator in an increasingly crowded hospitality scene.
According to Roots, the hotel was hit by a spate of thefts in the 1970s and 1980s, and was also the venue for J. B. Jeyaretnam's public forum on free speech in July 1986.
In 1992, the hotel became part of a joint initiative known as "The Riverside: Havelock Downtown Hotels" by the then-Singapore Tourist Promotion Board to draw tourists to the area.
The initiative also included Apollo Singapore Hotel, Furama Singapore Hotel, The Glass Hotel, King's Hotel and River View Hotel, according to newspaper archives. Today, Hotel Miramar is the only independent hotel standing, as the other hotels were bought over or re-branded.