Best Luxury Hotels in Indonesia
Seven properties spanning Bali's design and wellness tradition, from Ubud's rice-terrace interior to Uluwatu's clifftop south coast, extended by one remote outlier on the island of Sumba. Chosen against the same four criteria throughout, not ranked by price.
Bali’s decades-long design and wellness reputation runs through most of this collection, extended by one considerably more remote property on Sumba for a reader willing to go further off the usual route.
For Ubud
Capella Ubud, Mandapa, Bambu Indah, and COMO Shambhala Estate all sit within a short drive of central Ubud, but read very differently: Capella’s colonial-explorer-camp fantasy, Mandapa’s Ritz-Carlton Reserve pool villas on the Ayung River, Bambu Indah’s reclaimed Javanese houses, and COMO’s dedicated wellness programme rather than a standard resort format.
For the south coast
Bulgari Resort Bali and Alila Villas Uluwatu both occupy the Bukit Peninsula’s clifftops, reached by funicular or built directly into the limestone, and represent two different approaches to the same dramatic coastline, one Italian in sensibility, the other shaped by WOHA’s award-winning sustainable architecture.
For genuine remoteness
NIHI Sumba, a full flight east of Bali on a considerably less developed island, is this collection’s clearest choice for a reader who has already done Bali and wants somewhere with real distance between it and the next resort.
The list
7 hotels in this collection
Keliki, Ubud, Indonesia
Capella Ubud
A colonial-era explorer's camp reimagined by Bill Bensley, its 23 tents strung along a jungle ridge above Ubud's Wos River valley.
From $660 per night
Ayung River Valley, Ubud, Indonesia
Mandapa, A Ritz-Carlton Reserve
A bamboo-and-stone sanctuary cut into the Ayung River gorge, where Bali's most exclusive address still moves at the pace of the rice terraces around it.
From $950 per night
Sayan, Ubud, Indonesia
Bambu Indah
Antique Javanese bridal houses and hand-built bamboo pavilions, dismantled, relocated and rebuilt above the Ayung River gorge by the founders of Green School Bali.
From $250 per night
Begawan, Ubud, Indonesia
COMO Shambhala Estate
A jungle sanctuary above the Ayung River where a British jeweller's decade-long folly became the flagship of one of Asia's original destination wellness retreats.
From $650 per night
Uluwatu, Bukit Peninsula, Indonesia
Bulgari Resort Bali
A Milanese architecture firm cut 59 villas and five mansions into a limestone clifftop above the Indian Ocean, then built one of the longest hotel funiculars in the world to reach the private beach below.
From $1,500 per night
Uluwatu, Bukit Peninsula, Indonesia
Alila Villas Uluwatu
A Singapore architecture firm carved a geometric limestone resort into a Bukit Peninsula clifftop in 2009, planting grass roofs across it so the whole property reads as an extension of the savannah it replaced.
From $800 per night
West Sumba, Indonesia
NIHI Sumba
A former surf camp on Indonesia's wildest island, rebuilt into one of the world's most private ultra-luxury resorts, still built around a wave almost nobody gets to surf.
From $1,650 per night