A Tropical-Island Luxury Playground With A Soul: Nihiwatu

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6/7/2016
Bye Bye Monte Carlo: Las Vegas Casino Resort Being Replaced - Forbes
Lifestyle
JUN 6, 2016 @ 10:33 AM
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A Tropical-Island
Luxury Playground
With A Soul:
Nihiwatu
Ann Abel, CONTRIBUTOR
FULL BIO 
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
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“Should you fancy a bath, there’s a
bathtub on your terrace,” said the
manager as she showed me into my
villa at Nihiwatu, the deservedly
ballyhooed luxury playground on the
Indonesian island of Sumba. Hoteliers
can be careful not to overpromise, but
that may be the biggest
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understatement I’ve heard.
That tub is a hefty half-sphere that’s
black on the outside and gleaming
golden on the inside and, like most
spaces in the villas (especially this one,
Puncak, which sits atop a hill), has
tremendous views over the sea below.
Inside, the three big bedrooms have
cheerful fabrics and enticing window
seats. Seemingly trivial details are
handled right. Is this really the first
time that my mosquito net has not
been tucked under my mattress like a
sleep-time straitjacket but left to hang
on the outside of my nightstand,
leaving my water and book within easy
reach? (Sadly, yes.) But then, nothing
at Nihiwatu is merely anything.
The private pools and stunning views from the Puncak villa
That doesn’t mean anything feels
overblown or excessive. Rather,
everything is the essence of comfort
and pleasure without feeling showy.
Tagged “the Edge of Wildness,”
Nihiwatu is the kind of place where no
one wears shoes. Some people wear
board shorts to dinner. Guests form
fast friendships—one honeymooning
couple invited a friendly near stranger
to join their romantic private beach
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dinner—and, more important, connect
with the island they’ve traveled a long
way to reach.
And Sumba is not just any exotic
island. Three times the size of Bali
with just 650,000 residents and one
resort, Sumba has kept its traditional
culture intact. Houses have thatched
roofs shaped like dromedary humps,
women dye and weave beautiful ikat
textiles, and elaborate caste and dowry
systems still exist. Nihiwatu’s current
owner, Christopher Burch, tells me
he’s been to Sumba 40 times and he’s
still learning. Something about the
island surprises him every time, and
“I’m amazed by how much I don’t
know.
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“It’s like Bali 400 years ago,” says the
brand-building entrepreneur, who
visited Nihiwatu in 2012 after learning
that the original owners, Claude and
Petra Graves, were looking for help to
expand it. He acquired it later that
year and, with the help of highly
regarded hotelier James McBride as
managing partner, transformed it
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from a surf retreat for passionate wave
chasers—there’s an exceptional lefthand break—to a romantic, convivial
hideaway with broad appeal.
The signature wave
Their mission statement, in fact, was
to “evolve Nihiwatu into one of the
best resorts in the world, an example
of a sustainable operation in harmony
with the environment and the
Sumbanese people.” Mission
accomplished.
Surfing remains a draw. Skilled surfers
pay $100 per day on top of the room
rates (from $650 per villa, almost all
inclusive) for one of ten spots on
Occy’s Left, the wave that—along with
Sumbanese culture—started it all. A
surf school in calmer waters was just
added for those who aren’t up for
Occy’s.
There’s a gorgeous yoga deck where a
skilled instructor teaches almost every
morning and evening (sunsets are
spectacular) and a serious equestrian
program with arena lessons and
meditative “horse whispering”
sessions as well as galloping along the
mile and a half of beach. A cool kids’
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club is in the works, as is a cocoabean-shaped outpost of the popular
Charly’s Chocolate Factory in Bali—the
real beans are already growing.
The spa, in the nearby valley of Nihi
Oka, is a showstopper. Burch calls it
the most beautiful place in the world.
Guests make a “spa safari” day of it,
riding over in a jeep or hiking a couple
hours through rice paddies and
villages to a collection of open-air
bales, one on a promontory for
breakfast and lunch, another for
lounging, and three on a hillside for
treatments. Couples pay a day rate for
unlimited spa services; some don’t
return until sunset. Perhaps that
demand is why Nihiwatu just added an
overnight spa safari, in which guests
stay in an air-conditioned villa that’s
as comfortable as the ones back at the
resort.
The lounge bale at Nihi Oka
Admittedly, an island whose people
can pull this off is not completely lost
in time. And “400 years ago” is of
course an exaggeration. But Burch
tells me (over a feet-in-sand dinner
that started with just-caught sashimi)
that when he first visited, several years
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ago, Sumba had barely any roads and
even fewer motorbikes. Nothing was
recorded on paper. His goal with
Nihiwatu is to preserve that
innocence. With close to 400 people
on staff, Nihiwatu is one of the island’s
biggest employers—Burch speculates
that he’s about as a significant an
employer as the government. And the
government has taken notice,
embracing the resort’s high-luxury,
low-footprint plan, a major goal of
which is to encourage similar projects
and preventing Sumba from devolving
into the next Bali.
With nearly 400 staff for 32 villas,
Nihiwatu has one of the most
impressive staff-to-guest ratios
anywhere. Even more impressive: The
staff is caring and genuinely curious
about guests’ lives. When I rolled up
for lunch at the beach bar close to 3,
when everyone else was well into their
afternoon surf or nap, a server stayed
to chat and keep me company even as
his shift ended.
They’re almost all from the island, and
as personable as can be. An exception
(to the native part, not the personable
part) is the accomplished Australianborn chef Ben McRae, who makes
ever-changing gastronomic meals out
of daily-caught fish and produce and
animals raised on Nihiwatu’s farm.
Everything tastes better when the
sound track is crashing waves and the
views are of endless turquoise seas or
shimmering stars, but McRae’s food
would be good anywhere.
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While plenty of guests stay put and
sunbathe—there’s a new 20-meter
infinity pool that makes that even
more enticing—or stick to the oncampus activities, many more explore
the island on guided hikes, waterfall
treks and village visits. Every few days,
the resort organizes tours to see
projects of the Sumba Foundation, the
core of Nihiwatu.
Traditional dress in Sumba


Burch has significantly expanded the
work of the foundation, which the
Graves started in 2001. While keeping
Nihiwatu profitable, he’s turned it into
a philanthropic vehicle for community
projects. Over the past 14 years, the
foundation has set up more than 15
primary schools, built 48 wells and 5
medical clinics, supplied 172 villages
with clean water and reduced malaria
by 85%.
When guests remarked on what we’d
seen—the sophistication of the
medical clinic, the orderliness and
cheer of schoolchildren receiving a
free lunch—the foundation director
nodded. “If that doesn’t pull your
heart strings, you probably don’t have
a heart,” he said. No wonder many
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guests end up donating.
Burch thinks they will eventually do
more “The travel world is ready for
change,” he says. The idea of a
traditional five-star resort, in which
we bring all our expectations of
glamour and home with us, then
sequester ourselves in a gated
property that tries to deliver them, is
fading. Instead, we increasingly want
“basic humble things” and a
meaningful connections. And of
course, “people want authenticity.”
They’ll find it here. He looks around
the dining room and the night sky
beyond. “How can you not feel
embedded in this place?
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JUN 6, 2016 @ 08:53 AM
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Bye Bye Monte
Carlo: Las Vegas
Casino Resort Being
Replaced
Larry Olmsted, CONTRIBUTOR
I travel to learn, eat, golf and ski, but mostly
for travel’s sake FULL BIO 
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
9/15
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The Monte Carlo casino resort, a longtime fixture on the
central Las Vegas Strip, will soon be no more. Photo: MGM
Resorts
On Friday, MGM Resorts MGM +1.41%
International announced the biggest of
several recent changes to the Las
Vegas Strip. This comes less than two
months after MGM’s opening of The
Park, a new urban oasis in the heart of
Las Vegas Boulevard. Modeled on
Nevada’s desert landscape and full of
sculptures and water features, The
Park is lined with an appealing array
of indoor and outdoor bars and
eateries, and serves as a pedestrian
pathway to the new $375 million TMobile Arena, the biggest concert and
event venue on the Strip. The Park is
located between New York-New York
and the casino resort formerly known
as the Monte Carlo.
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While the Monte Carlo offered a good
value price point, great location, and
had some interesting features, most
notably its little known but excellent
boutique resort within the resort,
Hotel 32 (read more here at Forbes)
and it early embrace of the city’s
current outdoor dining and attraction
trend with the Monte Carlo Plaza
(read more here), it never had a
cohesive theme or appeal the way
most other big casino resorts do.
That’s all about to change.
The $450 million transformation
begins this fall and will result in an
essentially new 2,700-room luxury
resort, Park MGM. In addition to the
new namesake upscale hotel, it will
include a 292-room spin-off of the
Sydell Group’s popular New York City
lifestyle hotel, the NoMad. Two years
ago MGM did a similar move in
bringing Miami’s hip Delano to its
Mandalay Bay Resort (read a detailed
Delano review here). Today it is the
norm for almost every big casino
resort in town (Caesars Palace, MGM
Grand, Aria, Mirage, Wynn, Mandalay
Bay) to house at least one smaller,
cooler, and typically more luxurious
hotel within a hotel. For savvy and
luxury-seeking travelers, these are
almost always the best way to go when
visiting (read a feature on this “secret”
second world of top Vegas hotel here).
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The NoMad Las Vegas will offer a selfcontained experience, including
dedicated drop-off lobby and
swimming pool, as well as its own
gaming, eating and drinking
experiences, most notably an outpost
of the award-winning NoMad
restaurant by Chef Daniel Humm of 3
Michelin-starred Eleven Madison
Park, the only restaurant in America
in the Top 10 of the (formerly known
as) San Pellegrino list of the world’s
best restaurants. The Park MGM hotel
will feature the first Vegas outpost of
the Turin, Italy-based Eataly concept,
whose locations around the world
merge Italian cafes, to-go counters
and full-service restaurants with highquality Italian retail grocery products.
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Just two months ago, MGM opened The Park, an outdoor
urban oasis of food, drink, sculptures and water features
alongside the Monte Carlo, soon to be reborn as the Park
MGM resort. Photo: MGM Resorts
Park MGM was conceived by partners
MGM and Sydell to target a younger,
well-traveled demographic seeking
unique experiences and innovative
design, appealing to this audience’s
desire to be more social, connected
and culturally aware. The Park MGM
resort will keep the Monte Carlo’s
European design influences, but this is
a property-wide transformation of all
public and guest spaces, and both new
hotels will have fully redesigned guest
rooms. The design will have a
residential feel, combined with
classically inspired European
furnishings and a robust art program.
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A Tropical-Island Luxury Playground With A Soul: Nihiwatu

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