Music Festival + Staycation: How W Hotels Is Changing The Experiential Game

The Bali edition of the globe-trotting event Wake Up Call witnessed healdiners Tove Lo, FKJ, Angus and Julia Stone and more

- Nirmika Singh

What kind of hotel offers a full-fledged music festival on the menu—complete with a pool-side view of your favorite band on stage and after parties with unlimited room service? Not your regular kind, clearly.

After hosting editions across its Hollywood and Barcelona properties in September, W Hotels brought its travelling music festival Wake Up Call to W Bali earlier this month. The W Bali-Seminyak is a gorgeous luxury beach resort with a distinct character (read ubiquitous, cute puns on merch, managers with mohawks, a sunset view to die for), making it a rather irresistible choice for both millennials and seasoned travelers.

Nestled in the island’s plush neighbourhood of Seminyak, which boasts immaculately curated fashion stores, organic cafes and bars along a winding street, W Bali is as cosmopolitan-tropical as it can get—the hospitality is topclass Asian and the operations world-class. Put all the above things in context of a two-day festival and it is no wonder that a 229-room hotel was able to pull of one of the most experiential music events we’ve witnessed in a long time. But again, we are speaking of a hotel chain that enjoys bragging rights for not only housing private recording studios in some of its prime properties (W Bali has one) but also starting its very own record label!

No reservations on curation

It is one thing for a hotel to organize a ‘music event’ in its premises but quite another for it to attempt a ‘festival.’ Music festivals are rarely ever only about the music, and the one thing that most organizers get wrong is assuming they always are. As much as a festival is about watching your favorite acts live in action, there’s no denying it is the overall experience that matters to the majority of attendees. Are the bars within arm’s reach? Is the food real good? Hope the loos don’t resemble a war-ravaged zone?