Hoshinoya Bali Opens, the Japanese Group’s First Resort Abroad

Hoshinoya Bali opened on 20 January 2017 in the hills east of Ubud. It is the first Hoshinoya outside Japan and the fifth in the collection of Hoshino Resorts, the family company from Karuizawa that has spent two decades reinventing the Japanese ryokan. The resort has 30 villas on a ridge above the Pakerisan River.

Water as the plan

The Pakerisan valley is part of the landscape that UNESCO listed in 2012 for the subak, the cooperative irrigation system that has fed Bali’s rice terraces from temple springs for a thousand years. A subak channel runs through the property, and the resort takes its plan from it.

The villas are arranged in rows along three long swimming pools, each some 70 metres in length, which read as canals between the buildings. Every villa has its own steps into the water from a private terrace, so that guests swim from their rooms along a shared channel screened by planting. The arrangement is neither a private pool villa nor a shared resort pool, and it gives the place the feeling of a village on water.

The architecture is by Rie Azuma, who has designed every Hoshinoya, with landscape by Hiroki Hasegawa. The buildings use Balinese forms and craft, with thatched roofs, carved timber panels and local stone, arranged with a Japanese sense of order. Villas come in three types, one of them on two floors, with daybeds in sunken living rooms that open fully to the pool.

The valley

The public areas stand at the edge of the ridge. The most memorable are the gazebos of the Café Gazebo: small roofed platforms cantilevered over the jungle of the valley, each for one party, where tea and sweets are served in the afternoon. The spa is reached by a funicular down the slope, and its treatment rooms are set in the forest above the river. The restaurant serves Indonesian dishes prepared with Japanese technique in a tasting format.

Activities follow the Hoshinoya habit of drawing on local practice: morning yoga, walks through the rice fields with a subak farmer, offerings and visits to the water temples nearby, including Tirta Empul and the rock-cut shrines of Gunung Kawi, both a short drive away.

Where it fits

Yoshiharu Hoshino, the group’s president, described the opening as a necessary step beyond Japan. In Bali the resort entered a field led by Amandari and Four Seasons Sayan, and later joined by Capella Ubud and Buahan. It differs from them in atmosphere: quieter, more ordered, with service in the Japanese manner. It is about 30 minutes from the centre of Ubud, which keeps it peaceful and makes a driver necessary.

The group’s city property, Hoshinoya Tokyo, had opened six months earlier.