Andaz vs Hyatt Regency Bali: which Sanur hotel is for you

In 1973, an architecture student from Sydney jumped off a ship in bad weather and swam ashore at Sanur. He never really left. A Brahmin family adopted him, he took the name Made Wijaya, and to keep his visa he coached tennis on the courts of the brand-new Bali Hyatt, the first international hotel on the island. A few years later, the hotel asked him to design its garden, and what he planted became the template for the Balinese resort garden across half of Asia.

Forty years on, the Bali Hyatt closed and its land was split in two. The same designers were handed both halves. On one, they restored the old hotel around Wijaya's garden and reopened it as the Hyatt Regency. On the other, a narrow strip of beach with 149 rooms to fit behind it, they built the Andaz from scratch: a village designed to look as though it had grown there. Some of its furniture was even rescued from the old hotel next door. Same land, same hands, two opposite answers. One garden had fifty years to grow. The other had to be built to look as if it had.

At a glance

Hyatt Regency The garden that grew 19 Andaz The village that was built

Hyatt Regency Bali and Andaz Bali compared

	Hyatt Regency	Andaz
Where	Sanur beachfront, 500 m of beach	Sanur beachfront, next door
From the airport	20 to 45 min	20 to 30 min
Entry room, per night	From around $175	From around $275
Size	373 rooms on 9 hectares	149 rooms and villas on about 6 hectares
Design	Made Wijaya garden, restored 1973 hotel	A new Balinese village, opened 2021
Best room	Any, with Regency Club access	An Andaz Suite near the Shanti Pool
Eating	Pizzaria, Regency Club evenings	Village Square breakfast, Fisherman’s Club
Best for	Families, space, value	Couples, design, food
The Bali 20	Not ranked	No. 19

Numbers on the photos are positions on The Bali 20. Rates are for the entry category at the time of writing, September 2026, and move with the season.

Why stay in Sanur at all?

For a calmer, older Bali, an hour from Ubud. Sanur was where Bali's tourism began, long before Seminyak or Canggu, and it still feels like it. It faces east, so you get the sunrise rather than the sunset, and a beach path runs for kilometres, busy with people walking and cycling from early morning. It has the shortest run from a beach to Ubud on the island, about an hour. The trade-off is the sea itself. A reef keeps the water calm and shallow, which is lovely for small children but less so for real swimming, and at low tide you'll meet a fair bit of seaweed. In Sanur, the hotel matters more than the beach, which makes choosing the right one more important.

The garden that grew, or the village that was built?

This is the whole difference, and it goes back to the land. The first hotels on Bali could buy the best and biggest plots when land was still cheap. The Bali Hyatt had nine hectares and five hundred metres of beach. Hotels that came later have to squeeze onto narrow strips of sand and build backwards from there, like a funnel. The Hyatt Regency inherited the first kind of plot. The Andaz got the second.

Wijaya's garden is what makes the Hyatt Regency. It's planted so densely that you can never quite hold its size in your head. Paths branch, loop back and open onto ponds you didn't know were there a minute earlier. There are several pools, each small and screened off by vegetation, so it never feels like one big pool deck. It's less designed to impress than simply inherited, and after fifty years it feels less like a hotel garden than a world of its own.

At the Andaz, the designers turned a constraint into one of the cleverest resorts on the island. Instead of a grand entrance and a straight shot to the sand, they built a village: low clusters of rooms around hidden courtyards and ponds, laid out according to Balinese cardinal directions, with red brick walls rooted in traditional Sanur building and trees over eighty years old left standing through the architecture. You wander from courtyard to courtyard and only eventually reach the beach. I've walked through it more times than I can count and still notice new details. But it's a heavily engineered place, composed for how it looks first and how it works second. The bikes for the beach path were always already lent out, and after rain some stone paths turned properly slippery. One garden has grown into its imperfections. The other was designed without them, and occasionally shows it.

Which room should you book?

At the Andaz, this decision can make or break your stay. The narrow plot runs from the beach all the way back to a busy main road, and the rooms around the Village Square and lobby sit closest to it. On our first stay we felt the traffic, noise and even vibration. The second time we booked an Andaz Suite near the Shanti Pool, well back from the road and closer to the lagoon, and it was a different hotel: quieter, with a butler who pulled the whole stay together. Two stays, two hotels, and the difference came down to the room category.

At the Hyatt Regency, the rooms are the part the old hotel couldn't quite shake off. They sit in low buildings named after flowers and draped in hanging plants, pleasant and inoffensive, but underneath the renovation you're still in the original Bali Hyatt structure. The money here has gone into the garden, and into the one upgrade that genuinely matters: access to the Regency Club.

Where will you eat better?

The Andaz at breakfast, the Hyatt Regency in the evening. The Andaz breakfast is spectacular: small plates from all four of its Village Square kitchens at once, from cheese crêpes and a prawn omelette to a pancake soufflé and matcha granola. Every morning became a small adventure in what to try next, and the Village Square turns genuinely beautiful after dark. Fisherman's Club on the beach was our favourite for lunch and dinner. The Hyatt Regency's breakfast is calm and a little plain by comparison.

In the evening, though, the old hotel has a secret. I don't even like club lounges, and the Regency Club became the reason I'd go back: an open wooden pavilion tucked into Wijaya's garden, surrounded by ponds and running water, with live gamelan most evenings. Between five and seven there's a hot and cold buffet that changes daily, from satay and prawns to pork buns, with proper desserts and genuinely good cocktails included. By the time it winds down, dinner feels unnecessary. And the two halves of the old Bali Hyatt still share a bill: whichever you stay at, you can eat at the other and charge it to your room. The Neapolitan Pizzaria on the Hyatt Regency's beach is a short walk from both. I originally came for the pizza.

Who is each one for?

The Andaz for couples who love design, the Hyatt Regency for families who want space. The Andaz is popular, and at times busier than its quiet courtyard photos suggest. Its service is professional and well drilled rather than personal, a hotel visibly trying to please absolutely everyone. For a first trip to Bali, though, I don't think there's a better modern version of the classic Balinese village. The Hyatt Regency is one of the most family-friendly hotels in the area: nine hectares to roam, several pools, and a calm that makes you forget you're sharing a garden with 373 rooms.

Which is the best value?

The Hyatt Regency, clearly. From around $175 a night, with benefits attached when you book through us, it's the best all-round deal in Sanur, on grounds this good and with a club this good hidden inside them. The Andaz, from around $275, costs about a hundred dollars more, and it earns that with its design and its breakfast, as long as you pay for the right room. And there's a third option on the same beach. The InterContinental Bali Sanur is all suites, starting from 90 square metres, from around $230 a night: the biggest rooms in Sanur. It beats both on space and on little else, with one small main pool and quieter days, but if room to spread out matters most, it's worth knowing about.

Andaz or Hyatt Regency?

The Hyatt Regency for space, value and families. The Andaz for design, breakfast and couples. They share a beach, a pizzeria and a guest account, so whichever you choose, you get a little of the other.

The full reviews are here: Andaz Bali and Hyatt Regency Bali.

The real question is which half of the old Bali Hyatt you'd rather wake up in. There's the garden a young man who swam ashore planted fifty years ago, grown dense and a little unruly. Or there's the village its neighbours built to look as if it had always been there.