WATG, together with development consortium Agung Podomoro Land (APL) and French hotelier Sofitel, is delighted to announce the opening of the 415-key Sofitel Nusa Dua Beach Resort in Bali. The comfort and elegance the industry has come to expect from WATG’s projects was achieved in record time on a challenging site.The extraordinary speed it was completed in was driven by an extremely tight deadline. In 2011, it was announced that Indonesia was to be the host country for the APEC Conference in October 2013, with Nusa Dua as the venue. The hotel—yet to be designed, let alone built—was to accommodate the Indonesian President and his ministers and to be the venue for the Heads of State meetings that would culminate the Conference. A 2,300-square meter Retreat Center was designed to host these meetings.
Other unique features are responses to challenges posed by the site. For over two decades, it had been an eyesore occupied by a half-finished project—more than a hundred partially completed villas. The design brief required retaining some of these, on a site with a narrow beach frontage and limited ocean-view opportunities. In the end, 17 of the villas were retained, while ocean views were achieved for 60 percent of the guest rooms. Still more unusual aspects of the hotel are characteristic WATG touches of celebrating and integrating the local culture into the project.
The design of the Sofitel was WATG’s first project with APL, which has since commissioned WATG to design two additional five-star hotels in West Java and Bali and to consult on the consortium’s mixed-use project in Bandung.
