The hotel was named after British statesman Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore.

Upon his death in 1883, the hotel closed, and the Raffles Institution stepped in to use the building as a boarding house until Dr. Emerson's lease expired in September 1887.

Its proximity to the beach and its reputation for high standards in services and accommodations made the hotel popular with wealthy clientele.

The new main building offered numerous state-of-the-art (for the time) features, including powered ceiling fans and electric lights.

In 1902, a tiger that had escaped from a nearby circus was shot in a storage place under the Bar & Billiards room, which was originally constructed at an elevation.

In 1933, the financial troubles were resolved, and a public company called Raffles Hotel Ltd. was established, taking over from the Sarkies.

In 1987, a century after it first opened, Austrian writer and researcher Andreas Augustin discovered the long lost original drawings of Raffles Hotel, hidden in a Singaporean archive.

In addition, Long Bar, which was a favorite spot of celebrities such as Somerset Maugham, was relocated from the lobby to a new adjoining shopping arcade.

[12] Long Bar is also where the national cocktail, the Singapore Sling, was invented by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon.

[14] In April 2010, it was reported that a Qatari sovereign wealth fund bought Raffles Hotel for $275 million.

It displayed memorabilia such as photographs, silver and china items, postcards and menus, as well as old and rare editions of the works of the famous writers who had stayed there.