elanshin
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We're just coming to the end of our 3 night stay at RAFFLES Bali using Stay Night (2 Paid + 1 Free). So I thought I'd do a quick write up as information on this place is relatively scarce online. Again thanks to @Daver6 for his work getting the hotel to accept stay nights.
Accor Status: Platinum with Explorer +.
Booked: One Bedroom Pool Villa > Upgraded to Ocean Villa (ocean view).
Free Breakfast daily: 6:30am - 10:30am
Both Restaurants participating in Accor+ discounts.
Price: $1300 + ~200 in taxes per night. (so $1300 for the value of the free night).
TLDR
Pros:
Excellent top notch service. This is probably the single most outstanding part of the resort.
Well maintained resort
Good in-house Restaurants
Staff (they're the heart of the resort).
Top of the range ToTo bidet toilets everywhere. I'll miss sitting on the $10000 bidets.
Surprisingly well set up sound systems that surprised my wife in the bathroom.
Close to airport * this depends on if you like plane spotting or not. Otherwise there are a bit of plane noise
Cons:
New development will drastically decrease privacy for some villas as well as Loloan Restaurant.
Mosquitos and bugs. Prepare to be bitten even with the ample mosquito repellant spray around. There are also little critters running around all over the places which is part of the nature of the places.
Recommendation: Definitely if you're looking to use your Stay Night. The services is impeccable here and the staff pride themselves on their work and it shows. Everyone knew who we were without prompting and happily provide recommendations and suggestions if we asked.
Pre-Arrival - Arrival
The whole experience begins before you arrive. As I booked this relatively late (3 days before arrival in fact) I got an email almost within hours of confirmation asking for all the names of our travelling party, our itineray (arrival flights, departure flights or other locations), activities we liked to do as well as any dietary or other special requirements. I filled it all in and sent it back, they checked how much luggage we have to assign the appropriate car to pick us up. This part seemed all pretty normal for a luxury hotel. One thing I will mention is that in filling the arrivals card Raffles Bali isn't listed as such on the hotel drop down - I believe it's something like Raffleshomm- but checking that it was in the right location confirmed it was the correct hotel.
What was not normal was that we had a Raffles employee waiting at the exit of our aerobridge as we got off the flight. I completely missed him as I wasn't on the lookout at this point for a handler until my wife pointed out that it was odd there was a Raffles Bali sign there (normally its all the people for connecting flights). We doubled back around and sure enough he was there waiting for us. As we walked over to immigration, he confirmed with us our boarding passes so his colleague could get our bags. As we didnt have time to do our eVoA beforehand, we mentioned this to him and he patiently waited for us as we went to get it done. He did check we had our arrival QR code (or he was willing to help fill it out with / for us). Through the baggage hall we meet with the 2nd employee who had gotten 2 of our 3 bags just as the 3rd appeared.
From there we're chaperoned through the rest of arrival process with one of them trailing behind us with luggage and the other introducing various things. I'm sure they were also messaging the driver about the status of everything. We got through and straight into the premium pick up area. This is quite different to the other horde of signs just in the arrival hall for all the other hotels around.
Check-in
We had a 3rd party taxi service that Raffles booked as they thought their BMW iX5s weren't going to be big enough (having been in them later, they definitely are big enough). The driver was a local who did taxi services for higher end clients and we had an interesting chat along the way to the resort - about a 15-20mins drive. He mentioned a few places to eat nearby.
On arrival at the resort, we immediately were greated by the hotel GM as well as a traditional ritual and lead to some chairs overlooking the whole resort. Our butler Indri then came over, introduced herself, provided us with cold scented towels and some water. She also asked if we wanted a coughtail or mocktail welcome drink before doing the check in procedures. I asked if I could use my points to pay a portion which she sorted out with the GM shortly. She then promptly added us to a whatsapp group which includes herself as well as the general butler command service. She explains pretty much all the hotel amenities and restaurants as well as basically saying if theres anything, just ask her or in the whatsapp group and they'll see what they can do.
On resort is tennis courts, decent fitness room, spa treatments, 2 restaurants RuMaRi (by the lobby) and Loloan (by the ocean). There's a main ifinity pool by Loloan as well as some hiking trails a private beach. You get around the resort by summoning buggies and we were promptly taken to our villa. Our butler had set up a welcoming flower trail (I emailed ahead of time explaining we were here to destress following all our wedding activities) a cake as well as platters of snacks. She had a welcome drink as well set up in the minibar in the coughtail shaker. After giving us a tour of the villa, answered all our questions as well as given us her specific schedule for her work hours, she left us to enjoy everything.
Resort
There are definitely pros and cons to the location. Unfortunately for RAFFLES there is a construction development for a taller building on the hill next door which adds both noise and potential loss of privacy over time. The resort also faces directly at Denpasar DPS 's main runway and I'm pretty sure every villa can see the planes take off although only some can see them land. This is a pretty cool aspects and avgeeks would love this whilst non fans would find the plane noises a little annoying. Personally I enjoyed it seeing a TransNusa Comac ARJ take off, Aeroflot a350 bound for Moscow, Etihad 777 big boy land in etc.
I believe every room is equipped with a small 1.2m deep pool, big bathtub with amenities, indoor and outdoor showers, pool deck chairs as well as an outdoor lounging area. Each villa has reasonably tall plants and nature. Our Minibar was full although alcohol was not part of the service. All non alcoholic drinks were on the house including 3 different local Jamu. Plentys of snacks, tea and coffee all around the room that gets replenished everyday with different things.
Our goal was just to relax so we barely went out, but the resort is actually quite close to the Movenpick which was attached to the Samasta mall. Our butler team happily drove us over when we wanted to check it out. Otherwise we were just buggied around the resort. Loloan is a more casual restaurant and features a few more items from the grill whilst Rumari is a fancier restaurant with a 5 courset set menu. Price for that set was around just over 2m IDR (~$200 AUD). It's also listed as the only Krug Ambassador restaurant in Indonesia. They have a comprehensive spa treatments although my partner isn't as interested so we didn't really try them out. 2 dinners at each restaurant cost us about 180 and 160 for entree, main, dessert with a drink each. They provided free amuse bouche and bread. The Sambal butter with the head chefs brioche/ croissant creation were sublime at Rumari.
Breakfast is at Rumari between 6:30 and 10:30am. No buffet but big range of local and western foods on menu and an extensive tea list. Coffee passes the Melbournian test, flat whites are good here and after 2 weeks of Chinese Coffee and Kopi, we even had decafs at night.
We were generally quite full from a late breakfast (finishing after the restaurant closes) that we skip lunch with just the snacks in the room and go for dinner.
As our departing flight was QF44, our Butler asked if we wanted to stay on resort and organised a 6pm checkout for us with a shuttle service to the airport.
Personally, I would recommend the experience especially if you can use a stay night here.
I'll attach some photos after I get back to Melbourne and get them of my wife's phone.
Accor Status: Platinum with Explorer +.
Booked: One Bedroom Pool Villa > Upgraded to Ocean Villa (ocean view).
Free Breakfast daily: 6:30am - 10:30am
Both Restaurants participating in Accor+ discounts.
Price: $1300 + ~200 in taxes per night. (so $1300 for the value of the free night).
TLDR
Pros:
Excellent top notch service. This is probably the single most outstanding part of the resort.
Well maintained resort
Good in-house Restaurants
Staff (they're the heart of the resort).
Top of the range ToTo bidet toilets everywhere. I'll miss sitting on the $10000 bidets.
Surprisingly well set up sound systems that surprised my wife in the bathroom.
Close to airport * this depends on if you like plane spotting or not. Otherwise there are a bit of plane noise
Cons:
New development will drastically decrease privacy for some villas as well as Loloan Restaurant.
Mosquitos and bugs. Prepare to be bitten even with the ample mosquito repellant spray around. There are also little critters running around all over the places which is part of the nature of the places.
Recommendation: Definitely if you're looking to use your Stay Night. The services is impeccable here and the staff pride themselves on their work and it shows. Everyone knew who we were without prompting and happily provide recommendations and suggestions if we asked.
Pre-Arrival - Arrival
The whole experience begins before you arrive. As I booked this relatively late (3 days before arrival in fact) I got an email almost within hours of confirmation asking for all the names of our travelling party, our itineray (arrival flights, departure flights or other locations), activities we liked to do as well as any dietary or other special requirements. I filled it all in and sent it back, they checked how much luggage we have to assign the appropriate car to pick us up. This part seemed all pretty normal for a luxury hotel. One thing I will mention is that in filling the arrivals card Raffles Bali isn't listed as such on the hotel drop down - I believe it's something like Raffleshomm- but checking that it was in the right location confirmed it was the correct hotel.
What was not normal was that we had a Raffles employee waiting at the exit of our aerobridge as we got off the flight. I completely missed him as I wasn't on the lookout at this point for a handler until my wife pointed out that it was odd there was a Raffles Bali sign there (normally its all the people for connecting flights). We doubled back around and sure enough he was there waiting for us. As we walked over to immigration, he confirmed with us our boarding passes so his colleague could get our bags. As we didnt have time to do our eVoA beforehand, we mentioned this to him and he patiently waited for us as we went to get it done. He did check we had our arrival QR code (or he was willing to help fill it out with / for us). Through the baggage hall we meet with the 2nd employee who had gotten 2 of our 3 bags just as the 3rd appeared.
From there we're chaperoned through the rest of arrival process with one of them trailing behind us with luggage and the other introducing various things. I'm sure they were also messaging the driver about the status of everything. We got through and straight into the premium pick up area. This is quite different to the other horde of signs just in the arrival hall for all the other hotels around.
Check-in
We had a 3rd party taxi service that Raffles booked as they thought their BMW iX5s weren't going to be big enough (having been in them later, they definitely are big enough). The driver was a local who did taxi services for higher end clients and we had an interesting chat along the way to the resort - about a 15-20mins drive. He mentioned a few places to eat nearby.
On arrival at the resort, we immediately were greated by the hotel GM as well as a traditional ritual and lead to some chairs overlooking the whole resort. Our butler Indri then came over, introduced herself, provided us with cold scented towels and some water. She also asked if we wanted a coughtail or mocktail welcome drink before doing the check in procedures. I asked if I could use my points to pay a portion which she sorted out with the GM shortly. She then promptly added us to a whatsapp group which includes herself as well as the general butler command service. She explains pretty much all the hotel amenities and restaurants as well as basically saying if theres anything, just ask her or in the whatsapp group and they'll see what they can do.
On resort is tennis courts, decent fitness room, spa treatments, 2 restaurants RuMaRi (by the lobby) and Loloan (by the ocean). There's a main ifinity pool by Loloan as well as some hiking trails a private beach. You get around the resort by summoning buggies and we were promptly taken to our villa. Our butler had set up a welcoming flower trail (I emailed ahead of time explaining we were here to destress following all our wedding activities) a cake as well as platters of snacks. She had a welcome drink as well set up in the minibar in the coughtail shaker. After giving us a tour of the villa, answered all our questions as well as given us her specific schedule for her work hours, she left us to enjoy everything.
Resort
There are definitely pros and cons to the location. Unfortunately for RAFFLES there is a construction development for a taller building on the hill next door which adds both noise and potential loss of privacy over time. The resort also faces directly at Denpasar DPS 's main runway and I'm pretty sure every villa can see the planes take off although only some can see them land. This is a pretty cool aspects and avgeeks would love this whilst non fans would find the plane noises a little annoying. Personally I enjoyed it seeing a TransNusa Comac ARJ take off, Aeroflot a350 bound for Moscow, Etihad 777 big boy land in etc.
I believe every room is equipped with a small 1.2m deep pool, big bathtub with amenities, indoor and outdoor showers, pool deck chairs as well as an outdoor lounging area. Each villa has reasonably tall plants and nature. Our Minibar was full although alcohol was not part of the service. All non alcoholic drinks were on the house including 3 different local Jamu. Plentys of snacks, tea and coffee all around the room that gets replenished everyday with different things.
Our goal was just to relax so we barely went out, but the resort is actually quite close to the Movenpick which was attached to the Samasta mall. Our butler team happily drove us over when we wanted to check it out. Otherwise we were just buggied around the resort. Loloan is a more casual restaurant and features a few more items from the grill whilst Rumari is a fancier restaurant with a 5 courset set menu. Price for that set was around just over 2m IDR (~$200 AUD). It's also listed as the only Krug Ambassador restaurant in Indonesia. They have a comprehensive spa treatments although my partner isn't as interested so we didn't really try them out. 2 dinners at each restaurant cost us about 180 and 160 for entree, main, dessert with a drink each. They provided free amuse bouche and bread. The Sambal butter with the head chefs brioche/ croissant creation were sublime at Rumari.
Breakfast is at Rumari between 6:30 and 10:30am. No buffet but big range of local and western foods on menu and an extensive tea list. Coffee passes the Melbournian test, flat whites are good here and after 2 weeks of Chinese Coffee and Kopi, we even had decafs at night.
We were generally quite full from a late breakfast (finishing after the restaurant closes) that we skip lunch with just the snacks in the room and go for dinner.
As our departing flight was QF44, our Butler asked if we wanted to stay on resort and organised a 6pm checkout for us with a shuttle service to the airport.
Personally, I would recommend the experience especially if you can use a stay night here.
I'll attach some photos after I get back to Melbourne and get them of my wife's phone.
