The Bali hotels I keep going back to, and why most never earn it

I’ve fallen in love with a lot of hotels. I’ve stood on a terrace on the first evening and promised myself I’d come back every year. And more often than I’d like, by the third or fourth day, the feeling had gone. The view was still the view, the pool was still beautiful, but the magic had worn off, and the place turned out to be duller than I’d thought.

That isn’t really the hotel’s fault. Psychologists call it hedonic adaptation: we get used to almost anything beautiful astonishingly fast. We also remember an experience mostly by its high point and its ending, not by everything in between. So a hotel can give you a wonderful memory and still not be a place you want to return to.

Why don’t most Bali hotels try?

Most hotels in Bali are built for the first twenty-four hours: the arrival, the photograph, the moment on the terrace. That makes commercial sense. A great many of their guests are first-timers ticking off the island, and they’ll never come back anyway, so why build for a second visit that won’t happen?

But it shows. And the longer I’ve spent in Bali’s hotels, the more I’ve come to think that the real difference between a good hotel and one you return to isn’t the suite or the view. It’s who else is staying there.

What do returning guests do to a hotel?

In a hotel full of first-timers, the energy goes in every direction at once. Some guests are ecstatic, some quietly disappointed, some curious, some bored with a been-there air, some angry because the place doesn’t match the photographs. The staff have to absorb all of it, every day, and you can feel it in the atmosphere: restless, uneven, never quite settled.

In a hotel with a lot of returning guests, it’s different. People know exactly where they are and why they’ve booked, and they spend their holiday the way they like it, without needing to be impressed. The staff enjoy them, because there’s recognition and real connection. Ask someone you remember from your last visit how her little daughter is doing, and the whole dynamic shifts. The staff visibly enjoy it, the service becomes more personal, and the hotel grows calmer and more cohesive. It works as a filter too: the guests who come back tend to be the nice ones.

I’ve skied in Austria every year of my life, always in family hotels where generations of the same guests return each winter: the Tuxerhof in Tux, the Arlberg Hotel in Lech, the Lorünser in Zürs, the Hotel Edelweiss in Krössbach in the Stubai valley. In Tux, a guest who has stayed ten times with the same host can be honoured as a Stammgast, a regular, at a small ceremony with music every Thursday evening; the valley keeps a register of almost thirteen thousand of them. For a newcomer it can feel a little intimidating. But every one of those hotels has its own circle of loyal guests, and because of it, a soul you can’t buy. Bali has no such tradition. The hotels I love most here have built one anyway.

A hotel that lets you into its banjar

This website takes its name from the banjar, the village community every Balinese family belongs to. You don’t belong to a banjar to get something out of it. You belong because you’re part of it: you help at the ceremonies, you’re missed when you’re not there, you know each other’s children.

That’s what the hotels I return to feel like, and the moments that brought me back weren’t services. They were signs that I belonged. On my second visit to The Oberoi I was invited to a small reception in the garden, with a view over the beach, little dishes made specially, cocktails and champagne. Standing among that small group of people felt like being taken into a family.

At Tanah Gajah, over the years I’ve come to know the chef, Dean. He knows my taste, and through a lot of good conversations we’ve worked out a way of cooking for me that I love and that he enjoys making. That exchange is a large part of why I keep going back. It was there, too, that I was invited to lunch at Dua Dari, its small sister resort in Ubud, and spent the afternoon swimming and wandering its grounds.

At Komaneka at Keramas, I was waved off by a team of at least fifteen people. It felt genuine, and I’ll never forget it.

Why can’t you come back to a stranger?

Why do some hotels manage this, and most don’t? My Austrian hotels give the answer: they’re family hotels, many of them in the same hands for generations. You return to the same people.

The hotels I return to in Bali follow the same pattern. Tanah Gajah is back in the hands of the Hadiprana family, on whose land it stands, and much of its team has been there since the Zecha years. Komaneka was founded by Koman Suteja, the son of the man who built the Neka Art Museum, my favourite museum in Ubud; the hotels are named for two generations of that family. At The Laguna, staff have worked there across generations.

At a big chain resort, the general manager often changes every few years, and much of the team with him. Come back for a second visit and you’re returning to strangers. Most hotels aren’t only choosing to focus on the one-time guest. They’re organised for it.

Quiet wears in, spectacle wears out

When I look at the hotels I return to, they have one more thing in common. They’re small and very personal, with a worn-in circle of guests who know exactly what they’re looking for. The architecture is authentic and original, but never busy, never overwhelming. They’re quiet resorts.

The bombastic ones, however beautiful and however good, rarely feel like home. A spectacular hotel is built for the high point, and the high point is exactly what we get used to fastest. A quiet one works the other way: the more often you come, the more it feels like yours. Spectacle wears out. Quiet wears in.

So I’ll be honest about Mandapa. It’s spectacular, and better than most of my list on almost every measure. And yet it’s Viceroy or Amandari that I dream about, places that became part of my life rather than part of a trip. I know how that sounds. It’s emotion, not reason, and I don’t think there’s a formula.

And yes, money matters

There’s one more honest ingredient, and it’s the least romantic. Amankila is one of my favourite hotels anywhere in the world, and it’s so expensive that I can’t go back every year. Most of the others on my list I can afford to return to, and that’s exactly why they’ve had the chance to become part of my life. A hotel only becomes a home if you can afford to keep coming home. If my budget were larger, I’m sure my list would be longer.

The hotels I go back to

In no particular order, because they don’t belong in one:

Amandari · Amankila · COMO Shambhala · COMO Uma Ubud · Komaneka at Keramas · The Laguna · The Legian · The Oberoi · Raffles · Samabe · Tanah Gajah · Viceroy

There are plenty of others I like very much and would happily return to on a good offer. That’s a different thing. These are the ones that feel like coming home.

And the ones that were enough once

Some of Bali’s most remarkable hotels are experiences rather than relationships, and there’s nothing wrong with that. A hotel built to astonish you is something you don’t need to repeat to treasure. For a first trip, a honeymoon or a once-in-a-lifetime birthday, book one without hesitation. Just don’t confuse it with a home.

Is this kind of hotel disappearing?

I’m afraid it might be. More and more new hotels seem to be built with the business model in mind first, designed for the experience and for the camera, with everything engineered to look extraordinary on a phone screen. Read the press releases for Bali’s new openings and almost every one of them is spectacular. Somewhere, I’m sure, someone is already drawing plans for the island’s first treehouse hotel, or its first underwater suite.

At the very top of the market, that arms race makes sense, and I’ve written about why the newest hotels so often win it. But it comes at a price. The quiet, small, slightly worn hotels I return to weren’t built to be photographed. They were built to be lived in, and every year there seem to be fewer of them, as they make way for something more cynical: hotels designed to be visited once, ticked off and posted about.

I think Bali is heading the wrong way here. Which is all the more reason to treasure the hotels that still feel like coming home, and to keep going back to them.

How do you become a regular?

If you’d like a Bali hotel to become yours, a few things help. Go back in the same season, when the same team is there. Ask for the people you remember by name, and for the same villa. Tell the hotel what you liked last time, before you arrive rather than after. And make sure someone keeps a record of your preferences from one trip to the next, so the hotel knows who you are before you’ve reached the front desk. That last part is a large part of what I do for the people I plan trips for.

For your first trip to Bali, choose an experience. For every trip after that, choose a relationship.