Rosewood Luang Prabang Opens in a Forest Valley in Laos
Bill Bensley's 23-key resort opened on 27 March 2018 beside a waterfall outside the old royal capital of Laos, with six tented villas on the hilltop.
Rosewood Luang Prabang opened on 27 March 2018 in a forested valley about ten minutes’ drive from the old town of Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos and a UNESCO World Heritage site at the meeting of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. It was Rosewood’s first property in the country and one of the smallest in the group, with 23 rooms, suites, villas and tents.
The resort was designed by Bill Bensley, the Bangkok-based architect and landscape designer, who imagined it as a French-Lao hill station of the early 20th century. The buildings are scattered along a stream and a small waterfall. Riverside rooms and suites sit beside the water, Waterfall Pool Villas above it, and six tented villas stand on the hilltop among the trees, each of 75 square metres and each decorated with the textiles and patterns of one of the hill peoples of northern Laos. The other rooms are furnished around the figures who travelled through or governed the region in the colonial period, with antiques, maps and vintage cameras collected by the designer.
Dining is at The Great House, an open pavilion serving Lao cooking from ingredients bought daily from local farmers and foragers, a cuisine of herbs, river fish, sticky rice and fermented flavours that is little known outside the country. The Elephant Bridge Bar, named for the bridge that crosses the stream, mixes drinks with local herbs and spices. The spa occupies three tents overlooking the river and uses traditional Lao herbal therapies.
The resort arranges walks in the forest, mountain biking, boat journeys on the Mekong and visits to weaving and pottery villages. The town itself, with its monasteries, its dawn procession of monks and its night market, is a short drive away.
Luang Prabang had fine small hotels before, but Rosewood brought a different level of ambition, and the town has continued to attract investment since, helped from 2021 by the railway from Vientiane. Another of its hotels, La Résidence Phou Vao, is due to join The Luxury Collection.