Opened in 2018, Aryaduta Bali is the chain’s first foray into the island. Aryaduta itself is a local chain operating upscale hotels in major cities in Indonesia. In fact, it is the hospitality subsidiary of the Indonesian conglomerate, Lippo Group. As such, it is no surprise that its Bali hotel is located within the Lippo Mall Kuta complex.

Aryaduta Bali, in particular, has 178 rooms and suites spread between 3 floors. Due to the design and location of the hotel, rooms with sea views are not available at Aryaduta.

Location

Aryaduta is located in the Kuta area in the south of the island. With only 2 kilometres separating the hotel and Ngurah Rai International Airport, Aryaduta might be a desirable option to spend the night before a flight (at least that’s what I did). Connected to the hotel is the nearly-lifeless Lippo Mall Kuta, featuring a supermarket and a few restaurants. Given its location in Kuta, there are also many convenience stores and high-street eateries nearby.

A five-minute walk away is the Pantai Jerman (German Beach). It was said to be named as such after a German sailor ran aground on the beach and ultimately settled there. Whilst the story sounds quite charming, the beach is sadly anything but that. There are honestly many beach much, much nicer than Pantai Jerman beach.

Arrival and Check-in

After a drive from Ubud, we arrived at the Aryaduta at around 13.00, an hour early from the hotel’s published check-in time of 14.00. Given the hotel’s prominent façade, it was easy to find. After mentioning to the security guards that we were checking in, we were allotted a convenient spot right next to the lobby entrance. After parking, my first impression of the hotel was how odd the entrance’s design was. Whilst there is proper porte cochère, the area next to it was allocated to a restaurant. But even so, that restaurant had to be accessed via the lobby. The lobby is instead located down a hall to the right-hand side of the hotel.

Once inside, the check-in desks were at the other end of the lobby. After waiting a few moments, an agent became available, motioning me to come forward. She took copies of our IDs and told us that the room was ready. For the most part, the agent seemed quite friendly… well that is until she mentioned that we had received an ‘upgrade’.

Hostage to an Upgrade

So we got an upgrade… that’s great? Well, that came with a catch: we had to sign up for the chain’s loyalty scheme. When I told her I didn’t want to sign up and that I didn’t need that upgrade, she tried to reason with me. ‘Oh why wouldn’t you want to take it? It would be such a waste!’ When I persisted, she indicated that the room we booked wouldn’t be ready for a while either.

Well, that’s one way to take hostage of your guests. Since we had no time to waste with their shenanigans, I gave in and signed up. What was more annoying was that every detail in the membership form had to be verified by a one-time pin sent to the email and phone number. I think it is obvious that this was a method to get additional personal information from guests. What a mess!

Getting to the Room

After finally being issued a pair of keys, we headed to our room. Continuing with the hotel’s odd design trend, only one of the two pairs of lifts served our floor. It got really confusing when we got into the lifts to see that our floor was missing. Once we figured that out, we took the other lift to go up to our room on the first floor. Right across the lifts is this seemingly random seating area that said ‘VIP Lounge’. Okay…?

The confusion didn’t end with the lifts, however. We had to head through the door outside for a shortcut to get to our room in the Central Wing. To illustrate how strangely this hotel is designed, they conveniently handed out a double-sided floor plan map. I imagine a lot of guests must have gotten lost trying to navigate the corridors!

If anything, the map raised even more questions about the hotel’s layout and design. I just can’t help but feel confused. Why did they place of a ballroom and meeting rooms on a guest room floor?! I can’t imagine how loud it would be had the ballroom been in use. And the foot traffic too… Yikes.

Our Deluxe Premier Room

When we finally got to our room, what first came to mind was how there was an upgrade the begin with. The room looked exactly like the Deluxe Room we booked. Only after a careful analysis of their website did I realise that we were assigned a Deluxe Premier Room differentiated by a balcony/terrace. This also meant trading outside views with views of the courtyard or their ‘Secret Garden’ in Aryaduta-speak.

The room featured this awkward-looking really large bed that was really two twin beds joined together. If you pay attention to the bed, you’d also notice that it uses two blankets stacked atop each other in the middle… Whilst there is a nice-looking wooden radio clock on the bedside, it also used the sole power outlet. As such, there isn’t an available plug on the nightstand. In the end, I just moved this clock elsewhere since it took too much space anyways.

I did like that there is a nice living area with a proper sofa and lounge chair setup. In addition, in place of a desk was a dining table with two chairs. I also thought this was quite nice for what it is. Despite that, the prominent carpet in the room looked very worn and didn’t feel especially clean…

Bathroom

Contrary to what is suggested on their website, the bathroom isn’t clad in marble, which I thought is an interesting observation. When we entered, the bathroom had a rather unpleasant smell to it although that went away after a bit.

Again, in continuing the odd design trend, the wardrobe is placed inside the bathroom. Inside it was the safety deposit box too. Next to it was an awkwardly placed towel rack, conveniently placed over the garbage bin. The soap holder was also interesting, as it was shaped like a sandal/thong. That made grabbing the soap bar quite hard at times.

What was perhaps the most frustrating design choice in the bathroom was the perhaps the lack of soap holders in the shower! As the shower gel and shampoo came in dispensers affixed to the wall, there was no place to even place things like facial cleansers and your own shampoos. There’s also a lot of wasted space in the toilet area, that could have easily fitted a shower and bathtub combination… Really, who designed this place?!

Terrace

Outside the room is a personal terrace that has a small loveseat and an ashtray on the table. The terrace viewed the hotel’s courtyard that was called ‘Secret Garden’. Hmmm….

After heading out I found that the sliding door’s locking mechanism was quite difficult to figure out. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to lock the door. When I thought I finally locked it, I discovered the next morning that the door was effectively left unlocked overnight…

Dining

Our rate included breakfast, which is served at the rooftop restaurant between 07.00 and 10.00 each morning. As suggested by the map, we had to take a long and circuitous walk on the second floor before ascending up a flight of stairs to the restaurant. At the rooftop, the restaurant is to the right-hand side.

After mentioning our room number at the host stand, we were told we could sit wherever we want. That’s nice I guess, since there are many tables to choose from in the restaurant. Between the patterned-tile and concrete flooring as well as the grafitti-like artwork on the wall, the restaurant looked quite disjointed from the rest of the hotel.

In terms of the buffet itself, there is a reasonable spread of Indonesian, Chinese, and Western food. Most of them didn’t look especially appetising and were quite cold. I ended up ordering an omelette, which I regret doing. The omelette was huge, and could have easily consisted of 4-5 eggs. Even for an omelette, it was very heavy and sadly didn’t taste very good. I do have to admit praise to the hotel for offering a good amount of fresh fruit, which I ended up relying on.

Hotel Grounds and Pool

As denoted by the map, the hotel has several amenities in addition to their rooftop pool. First is the wedding chapel/function room called ‘The Heavens’. As far as the hotel goes, I think this genuinely looked quite nice. In front of it is the ‘Heavenly Garden’, which was closed for renovations. Like Maya Resorts, they surely use the adjective ‘heavenly’ quite a lot!

Then there’s the ‘Secret Garden’ courtyard that is accesible from the terrace of my room. Whilst I’m not sure what made it a secret garden per se, it was reasonably nice I suppose. The garden, or more accurately, the deck features a couple of daybed in gazebo setups that honestly don’t look too comfortable. But I could be wrong, since I didn’t try them out for myself.

Pool

Located on the rooftop, on the opposite side of the restaurant is the hotel’s pool. I’ve got to hand it out to Aryaduta, the pool actually looked quite nice. In fact, this might just be the single nicest thing about the hotel! Being on the rooftop, the pool is treated to nice sunset views of the sea.

There are a handful of sun loungers on the elevated platform by the pool, which honestly looked quite inviting. A further set of sun loungers are also available on the deck just beneath the pool. Had I spent more than a night at this hotel, I’d probably see myself spending most of my time here.

On one end of the pool is a standalone bar. Interestingly, there are also a few sunken bar stools and a table inside the pool, which effectively qualifies this as a swim-up bar. I also noticed that the bar has a hookah/shisha. Finally, on the other end is a jacuzzi, which I also thought looked quite nice.

Service

Apart from the very unpleasant check-in experience, most staff members I encountered at the hotel seemed well-intentioned. For instance, when the toilet got clogged shortly after check-in (which probably explains the unpleasant smell), it was promptly taken care of by the maintenance team when we were out.

Overall

Overall, I didn’t have a very pleasant stay at Aryaduta Bali. Whilst the pool and the location are nice, I had many reservations when it comes to the strange and inconvenient design of the hotel and the room. Despite that, I feel that I wouldn’t have as many qualms about the hotel had the check-in experience been less ‘aggressive’… which is a bit sad, since the hotel would’ve otherwise been an okay hotel for a layover. :/

Read more Bali resort reviews here!