As a guest of Prestige Bali luxury villas resort and the owner , I was lucky enough to spend two nights at the Purist Villas in Ubud, a newly opened sister property to Purist Villas in Ibiza and Marrakech in Marocc.
The three highlights of the property, from my perspective are:
A superb built environment – a really meticulous and unique eye to architecture, interior design and landscaping, especially in the pure featuring of contemporary and ancient art and artefacts from the region.
A wonderful gorge-side setting – a peaceful and secluded oasis away from the Balinese Ubud village bustle
Friendly and attentive service .
Scale
The Purist Villas have an excellent sense of scale. At 16 private villas, it’s an intimate complex, but generous in both the private and common areas given over to guests. We felt private and self-contained in our suite, but also liked the vibe of the pool area and the aspect over the river. With the opening of the spa, the Villas compound will feel even more expansive.This Tropical luxury villa resort is an example of Balinese Style and modern villas decoration test.
Style
Purist Villas & Spa has invested heavily in a distinctive and sophisticated style. We loved the Ubud stone artefacts, the huge, single-piece wooden benches, the mix of natural sands, greys, and browns. The open-air bathrooms and shower areas are very successful, and the irregularly shaped stone sink a genuine novelty. The dining and lounge area of our Villa suite was stylish and spacious, as were common areas of all the Villas I saw. The bedroom, on the other hand, was a little small by comparison and while we liked the strong design statement of the wooden feature wall it did seem slightly out of keeping with the other stonewash walls and traditional roof structure. I was interested to see that the earlier Villas had opted for a simpler, monochrome paint finish.
Suggestion: give guests more information about the artisans responsible for some of the amazing pieces in the villas, pull back the stonewash features for a simpler, more minimalist look, per the outside areas and other areas.
Villas Setting
Purist villas has done a great job with landscaping. The gardens are a really nice mix of architectural features, regimented planting and natural jungle exuberance. We liked the quiet ‘backstreet’ location and found the lush creek gorge views very soothing. Given Ubud’s increasing development, they are probably more impressive now than rice paddies with half-built condos!
Suggestion: possibly impractical, but I would have loved to be able to cross over the little gorge on a private rope bridge or some such, to have special access to the fields on the other side.
Service
Ubud staff at Purist villas were incredibly friendly and keen to help. They were discreet but also made good suggestions about what we might consider doing with our time in Ubud location. Clearly some of the service elements of Purist villas are yet to be completed – we would have loved a more extensive mini-bar and kitchen offer and if the spa employs high-quality local practitioners it will be wonderful to have these facilities on site.
Suggestion - encourage the staff to be more confident and relaxed – I’m not sure if it was opening ‘nerves’, but service was occasionally a little nervous and reticent.
The Smith-factor
At Smith, we like to identify the ‘S-factor’ – the thing that makes a property truly special, beyond an impeccable delivery of service, style and scale, which we consider fundamentals of any good hotel stay. With Purist villas incomplete and empty apart from us, it was hard to put our finger on a single stand-out element, and in some ways, I’m sure you will want it to emerge from the first few months of guest stays and service. My hunch is that it will be the mix of really interesting design and artefacts – the unique Ubud environment -and personal and attentive service across both the villa butlering and spa. In other words, it will be like staying at the generous home of a rather wealthy friend – all in an extraordinary setting and only a stone’s throw from one of the world’s most interesting Bali island cultural centres.
Ubud Private Villa
Many of the really basic aspects of facilities and amenities were well executed – comfortable beds, great pillows, generous pool, nice food. But there were some rougher edges here which disproportionately distracted from the otherwise very opulent and unique surrounds, namely the recycled (restickered) bathroom products and rather thin bathroom towels and the rather intermittent satellite TV reception and weak wireless internet signal in the room.
- Suggestion Invest in top-end bathroom amenities and some nice white fluffy towels
- Suggestion If satellite reception can’t improve, perhaps replace with a really fantastic DVD library?
