The Apurva Kempinski Bali — Hotel in Kuta Selatan

The overall rating is for the average between the Villa and Suites room.

Villa (5 star) There’s nothing not to love about the villa rooms. Big bathtub, sensor toilet with seat warmer (abit strange for me since it’s not winter), big comfy beds and soft pillows, nice long dipping pool with huge outdoor poolside area. (Ok the extra changing room by the pool was quite redundant since it doesn’t come with toilets and smelled musty from lack of use and cleaning) Love the Villa lounge. Breakfast was wide array of food selection from local cusine, soup noodles, some sushi, continental usual, pastries etc. I could stay there and eat for hours hahahah.

Especially love the attentiveness and service of the staff. A lady staff named April was awesome. She noticed I love mangoesteen and requested for some on my first day, she noted my preference for fruits and subsequently every breakfast she had kitchen prep and ready my fav fruits for me. On our last day there, she was on off but she did not forget me. She actually left instructions for her colleagues on duty to bring out my fruit when I’m done with my main meal. I am honestly impressed by that level of service!

What I love most is breakfast ends 12pm so I don’t have scramble and force myself to wake up early to have breakfast that typically ends 10am. This late ending was ideal for people like me who just want to sleep in during holidays. My hub laughed when he saw my eyes lit up at the 12pm notice lol.

Love their teatime snacks 3-5pm. Also love their all day beverage serving till 9pm. I told everyone I love this holiday because all the exercises I’m getting is my mouth from constant eating and legs moving between room and lounge hahah.

There are some monkeys so please don’t leave food at the poolside. We are not affected but one family had the monkey wreaking their specs for them.

House cleaning is very good. The floors are very well moped. (An important detail because in the room suites, the floors were not as squeaky clean and I even found a centipede on the folded bath floor mat. )

Room suites (rating 3) We stay one extra night here as the villa rooms were all booked out when we wanted to extend our stay.

I’m not very impressed by the overall room Floors weren’t exactly clean walking barefooted. There was zero bottle of waters. There was zero drinking glasses. There was no plates either despite offering a fruit bowl there. Not sure why nothing was available.

When we moved to Villa, concierge at Villa lounge assured us the new room will be prepped for 3 pax as per Villa. Yet when we moved over, nothing was prepped. No extra bed no nothing. In fact I waited till 7.30pm before I had to make a call to remind them of the extra bed request and housekeeping was surprised when I asked when is the bed coming. Obviously no one told them to prep any.

Next, the whole room was prepped for one guest. Towels was for one. Bath mat one for the shower but none for the tub or other sink. They knew there are 3 guests but only 2 towels.

Cliff lounge was good. The free cocktail hours 5-7pm was fantastic. We were there from 4pm-5 for teatime and 5-7pm for cocktail chatting. Service here was also impeccable. I missed the name but there was a guy in white who was also very attentive and provided excellent service. Though I have to say they ain’t as generous as Villa side with their mangoesteen lol.

Facilities The pool area is nice. But shallow. None of the pool exceed 1.15m if I rem correctly. But nice and long and spacious so it didn’t feel crowded.

My only complaint was allowing guests to smoke at the adult pool area. It was quite unbearable for me. Even at the children pool, there was a guy sitting there next to the shower area where korral restaurant was, on the phone smoking, with the smoke drifting directly to children area. The hotel staff saw but said nothing

Kids club is awesome. Best I have seen to date!

Japanese restaurant was very good. Went there 3 nights. The hot pot was good but someone got burnt. Korral...

Extremely disappointed with my experience at The Kempinski Apurva and would never ever return or recommend this to anyone..

To preface this I was blown away by the professionalism and service of Kempinski Sindhorn. I was so impressed that I decided to visit another Kempinski outlet while I was in Bali.

I certainly wish I didn’t.

With a premium price tag, the Kempinski Apurva failed to deliver on every single count. Bellboys strolled lazily and did not offer to carry the luggage from the vehicle or open the doors. I struggled with my luggage and it was only when I rolled it up to the counter myself did someone take the bag away from me. It was not a singular experience I noticed during my stay there the bell boys were very unhelpful, always more interested in chatting than helping the guests with their bags or getting in and out of cars.Even 3 star hotels had warmer service than this

The rooms were terrible. The hairdryer was so old the plastic was peeling off of the handle leaving it sticky to the touch. The rooms were completely not soundproof, so you could hear the conversations from outside as if your door was open.

Though I paid for a King Bed, my bed was actually just two beds pushed together with a bedsheet on top. Again, something I might expect from a cheaper hotel but certainly not one I was paying upward of $350 per night for.

-Soundproofing: Honestly the least you would expect from a hotel is to be able to get a restful experience in your room. But it was impossible given how poor fhte soundproofing was.

The last time I experienced such issues with sound was when I stayed at an Ibis and even then it wasn’t as bad as the Kempinski as the floors were carpeted. How bad it was - I could hear the staff ringing the doorbell from the next 2 doors down as clearly as if it was my own. Sleeping in? Forget it. I had Airpods and noise canceling earphones which i generally wear on the plane but I could still hear stomping and banging from upstairs and and whenever children or adults walked by my door I could hear their conversations, crying, screaming, running and stomping as clear as if my door was open. I had never experienced such poor sound isolation in my life. It truly made the trip extremely uncomfortable and awful. Not at all what I was expecting from a hotel like this at this price point.

Things just got from bad to worse when I found a LIVE baby cockroach in my wardrobe. In my twenty years of traveling that has truly never ever happened to me and I was extremely shocked and disgusted but by then I also was so numb and unsurprised after this horrible experience.

The facilities were poorly kept and staff was badly trained. While waiting for the elevator, the staff were watching Youtube videos with the audio blasting out loud. I would expect that from a guest, sure, even if I didn’t prefer it but I had never seen staff skiving on the job so obviously as I did here. I was completely appalled.

Other minor gripes : The breakfast buffet quality was extremely poor. The furniture in the room shows signs of serious wear and tear. I The location and architecture of the hotel are stunning but it only serves to contrast how badly the hotel is maintained and the quality of training of the staff.

Honestly there were so many other things that really disappointed me on my stay I’m just glad to be leaving. This is the worst hotel experience I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t even say this was bad for a Kempinski, I would say it was terrible for any kind of hotel. I will never try another Kempinski hotel aside from the one outstanding one...

Honestly, this was the Best Trip Ever! I am an event planner and I plan international trips for companies throughout the U.S. Therefore, I have been to some amazing places. However, The Apurva Kempinski Bali hotel created the MOST AMAZING experience for us that we have ever had. The architecture will WOW you upon arrival, the restaurants offer a variety of international cuisines and experiences we had never had the opportunity to do, but the primary element that really stood out is the staff. Everyone was amazing to work with and most of them called me by name every time we saw them.

I wish I had more of the staff names to feature in this review, but these are a few of the people who helped make this the best trip ever: Donny (driver who drove us every day and served as our tour guide), Eddy & Wiwik (servers in the villa lounge), Krisna/Nova/Yoga/Putu (housekeepers who went above and beyond for us. I especially appreciated the amazing towel animals!), Suryantika (mini bar attendant who noticed what we liked and stocked more of those things to satisfy our cravings), Pande (villa registration desk), Ayu & Wayan (group sales/events representatives who gave us a full tour) and the massage therapist who assisted me, whom I feel terrible that I cannot remember her name. I was actually not feeling well when I arrived in Bali so the staff even arranged for a doctor to come to our villa to treat my symptoms and they were very professional and gracious to me. They came fully prepared to treat me on-site and provided a VIP experience.

Traveling from the U.S. can be a bit daunting to consider, given Bali is on the other side of the world. I flew Emirates Airline though Dubai, spending a couple of days in Dubai on the way there. My friends flew Singapore Airlines, connecting through Singapore, and we all had very satisfying experiences. I flew Business Class on Emirates and the ticket actually included airport transfers on arrival/departure in Dallas and Dubai. This was a great offering, as it took something off my list of things to arrange for the trip. The Kempinski connected me with a DMC (REALM) who took care of the airport arrival transfers in Bali. I highly recommend them, as it was very much a VIP experience and, after traveling so far, we appreciated the upgraded services they provided.

We were in Bali for 9 days, which was the perfect amount of time for us. We ate all but two meals at the Kempinski and thoroughly enjoyed everything. The element that I most appreciated from the Kempinski was them assigning Donny to us, who was our driver/tour guide. I will likely be friends with him forever. Haha! He knew where to go, what time to go and assisted us to navigate the proper attire and process for each location we visited. We went site seeing every day, except for one, and that is because we were exhausted from all of the great activities. Plus, Donny recommended we leave the hotel at 3am the next day to go to The Gate to Heaven, which was 100% the right call and our favorite place to visit, though it is a hike to get there. I highly recommend asking for Donny and he seems to know EVERYONE! Also, if you don’t want to talk, he will simply drive you. However, if you want to talk and learn more about the country, culture, etc., he is also the perfect choice.

In closing, I obviously highly recommend The Apurva Kempinski Bali hotel for a once in a lifetime experience! We planned this trip to celebrate my turning 50 this year and it far exceeded my expectations. I have included some photos of the hotel and our other Bali...