Changing The Game

Indonesian hotelier Ronald Akili unveils the last stage of Desa Potato Head—his unique vision for a hotel-meets-community centre that has been a decade in the making.

- Daven Wu

As any hotelier will tell you, building a hotel requires an almost masochistic appetite for long project deadlines, eye-watering expense outflow and an even longer horizon for an adjusted-for-inflation return on investment. In most cases, five years is a bare minimum, but in the case of Ronald Akili’s ambitious Desa Potato Head project, that horizon has stretched to a decade—and the Jakarta-based real estate developer-turned-hotelier is still not done yet.

The first salvo was fired in 2010 when Akili—the son of prominent Indonesian entrepreneur and collector Rudy Akili, who also opened the Akili Museum of Art in Jakarta—launched Potato Head Beach Club in a quiet stretch of Bali’s Seminyak neighbourhood.

By any yardstick, it was a game changer: a slick mix of restaurant, music club, bar and pool, and social hangout for both locals and the greater community of hipsters that turned the tired old trope of Bali as the backdrop for surfers, yogis, spiritual shrines, traditional gamelan orchestras and kohl-eyed dancers on its head. For here was a thoroughly fresh take on Bali, a place whose setting is steeped in tradition but whose programming felt thoroughly millennial.

Exhibit B was five years in the making. In 2015, Akili opened the 58-suite Katamama right next to Potato Head Beach Club, tapping Indonesian architect Andra Matin and Singapore-based interior designer Takenouchi Webb to create a quietly modern space that was layered with teak and terrazzo, Balinese bricks and handmade Javanese tiles. It was another instant hit.