Four-star One MICHELIN Key Siem Reap, Siem Reap
Shinta Mani Angkor
A hotel in Siem Reap's Royal District that grew out of a free hospitality school, with Bill Bensley's gardens and ten two-storey pool villas of 156 square metres.
Opens the hotel's own website. We have no arrangement with the hotel.
- MICHELIN
- One Key
- Pool villas
- 10, each of 156 m²
- Designer
- Bill Bensley
- From the airport
- About 1 h 15 from SAI (our estimate)
The hotel
A hotel that started as a school.
It began as a guesthouse of eighteen rooms with a hospitality school attached. The Cambodian businessman Sokoun Chanpreda opened the school in 2004 to train young people from poor families, free of charge, thirty a year. The Shinta Mani Foundation grew out of it and has since built more than a hundred homes and fifteen hundred wells.
In 2012 Chanpreda and the designer Bill Bensley rebuilt the guesthouse as a boutique hotel. In July 2017 it took the name Shinta Mani Angkor, and Bensley then added ten villas in two pavilions each, with rooftop terraces and pools of their own. Five per cent of the group's revenue still goes to the foundation.
- Bensley Pool Villas Ten duplexes with a private pool, a rooftop living area and a butler.
- Khmer Tonics Spa Treatments based on Cambodian healing traditions, with products made by hand.
- Royal District A short walk from the centre of town and a short drive from the Angkor temples.
Rooms & suites
Three kinds of room, Bensley in all of them.
Bill Bensley designed every room, drawing on Angkor. The pool villas sit at the top of the range.
- Rooms Rooms and suites Around the central pool and gardens, in Bensley's playful style with nods to Angkor.
- Villa Bensley Pool Villa About 156 square metres over two levels and two pavilions, with a private pool, a rooftop living area and butler service.
Dining
Khmer cooking, old and new.
Restaurants as listed by the hotel. Shown for information.
- Kroya Modern Khmer Traditional Cambodian recipes, reworked
- Baitong Khmer street food and international The everyday restaurant
Good to know
Before you go.
- Where your money goes Part of every room rate funds the Shinta Mani Foundation, which runs the hospitality school, healthcare and village projects.
- Villas Butler service comes with the Bensley Pool Villas only.
Getting there
Flying to Siem Reap.
Siem Reap-Angkor International (SAI) opened in October 2023 about 50 kilometres east of town; allow about an hour and a quarter on the toll highway, our estimate. Private jets use the same airport, which has a VIP terminal with its own customs and immigration.
- Bangkok 50 min
- Hanoi 1 h 30
- Singapore 2 h 05
- Hong Kong 2 h 15
- Dubai 7 h 15 long-range jet
Questions
What guests ask first.
- Does Shinta Mani Angkor have a MICHELIN Key?
- Yes. It holds one Key in the current MICHELIN Guide selection.
- Who designed Shinta Mani Angkor?
- Bill Bensley, who rebuilt the hotel with its founder Sokoun Chanpreda in 2012 and later added the ten pool villas.
- What is the Shinta Mani Foundation?
- A charity set up alongside the hotel's hospitality school. Five per cent of the group's revenue goes to it, for training, homes, wells and healthcare.
- Can SkyCourtage arrange the flight to Siem Reap?
- Yes. We arrange Business and First Class seats on scheduled airlines and private jet charter to Siem Reap, with one final price, our margin included. The hotel is booked with the hotel or through our booking partner.
Also in Siem Reap
Other hotels worth the trip.
- Amansara King Sihanouk's guesthouse of the 1960s, now twenty-four suites, with temple visits each day by remork.
- Zannier Phum Baitang Forty-five thatched wooden villas on stilts among gardens and rice paddies, some with plunge pools of their own.
- Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor The town's grand old hotel, first opened in 1932, with a 35-metre pool set in its gardens.
- Park Hyatt Siem Reap A contemporary hotel of 104 rooms in the town centre, new to the MICHELIN Key list this year.
- FCC Angkor by Avani The old French governor's residence, an Art Deco mansion next to the Royal Residence, with a black-bottomed salt-water pool.
- Sala Lodges Eleven wooden Khmer houses, most of them half a century old, carried in from the countryside and raised again on stilts.
Staying at Shinta Mani Angkor?
Book the room, then the flight.
Rates and availability come from the hotel itself. For the journey to Siem Reap, a Business or First Class seat or an aircraft of your own: tell us the date and we come back with one final price, our margin included.
Opens the hotel's own website. We have no arrangement with the hotel.