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Move over, Ibiza: beach clubs in Bali have gone from ‘a little slice of heaven’ in the middle of nowhere to world beaters

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Move over, Ibiza: beach clubs in Bali have gone from ‘a little slice of heaven’ in the middle of nowhere to world beaters


That year, 1.4 million international visitors landed in Bali. Last year, the number hit 5.2 million. Add to that 9.7 million domestic tourists, and the island has developed at breakneck speed to accommodate demand.

Along with thousands of new hotels, restaurants and attractions, Bali has overtaken the Spanish resort island of Ibiza, home to Café Del Mar – one of the world’s first beach clubs – to become the beach-club capital of the world.

A sunset seen from Cafe Del Mar Bali. Photo: Cafe Del Mar

There are dozens of over-the-top venues to choose from on the island, including the 13th instalment of the Ibizan brand – Café Del Mar Bali, a whitewashed pleasure palace on the Seminyak beachfront with a domed amphitheatre and a 1,000 square metre infinity pool.

“It’s the biggest Café Del Mar ever built,” says John Zappia, CEO of Café del Mar Australasia. “Born in Ibiza, reborn in Bali – that’s our tagline.”

A sunny day at Finns Beach Club in Bali. Photo: Shutterstock
Further up the coast, in the surfing hub of Canggu, Finns Beach Club boasts 170 metres (560 feet) of ocean frontage, nine bars and five restaurants, including a rooftop bistro with French chefs and sommeliers, plus a massive lagoon pool pockmarked with 16 semi-submerged circular daybeds guests can exclusively hire with a minimum spend on food and drinks of 11.2 million rupiah (US$720) per day.

“Ibiza may be the home of beach clubs, but we can do more unique and innovative things here because we’re in a tropical paradise and a pro-business paradise,” says Finns co-owner Tony Smith, a former professional football player from Sydney, Australia.

Next door to Finns is Atlas Beach Fest, the biggest beach club in the world, occupying nearly three hectares (7.4 acres) of beach­­front land and with a capacity of 10,000 people.

Atlas Beach Fest is the biggest beach club in the world. Photo: Instagram/@atlasbeachfest

Billed as a “one-stop lifestyle centre”, Atlas features a half-colosseum that conceals an artificial waterfall, a retail village with 52 restaurants and bars, a 300-metre-long pool and a standing bar that stretches 1km (0.6 miles) from end to end.

The trend ignited by Ku De Ta nearly a quarter of a century ago is now coming full circle in Bali, with the opening of Luna Beach Club at Nyanyi, a black-sand beach a 90-minute drive from the airport, on Bali’s west coast.

It is one of 20-odd lifestyle projects under the Nuanu City project, a 44-hectare development that is described as sustainable and aims to “transform Bali’s urban landscape”.

This sculpture at Luna Beach Club is also a DJ booth. Photo: Luna Beach Club
Luna, which opened to the public on March 2, is on its way to meeting that goal: it looks less like a beach club and more like a hi-tech Singaporean sculpture park, with design cues taken from the Burning Man festival in the United States.

The first sculpture guests see on entering the club – a pair of 10-metre-tall guardians that together form a gateway – was created by Daniel Popper, a South African artist whose large-scale flammable sculptures helped define the Burning Man zeitgeist.

“At night the two statues will light up with 3D projection mapping,” says Smyth, who is now Luna’s general manager. The South African previously worked at Café Del Mar Bali as well as Ku De Ta.

Two massive sculptures at the entrance to Luna Beach Club. Photo: Ian Neubauer

Luna has five restaurants and bars, each of which is a work of art. The signature Luna Restaurant is set under a giant vortex that spirals up and out from a massive central column modelled on the banyan tree, which is considered holy by the Balinese.

The furniture, mid-century tropical, is all bespoke and handmade. The waiters’ stations are encircled by intricate hand-carved dragons. The open-air kitchen, led by James Ephraim, former executive chef of Mozaic, one of Bali’s most iconic fine-dining restaurants, is full of contraptions for cooking over fire.

Overall, the club looks like a set from a Disney jungle cartoon, with a superstructure made from locally sourced eco-friendly bamboo.

A tree pod made from eco-friendly bamboo at Luna Beach Club. Photo: Ian Neubauer
Bamboo has a tensile strength comparable to steel but is actually stronger than steel in the key strength-to-weight ratio,” says Charlie Hearn, of Inspiral Architects, the Bali-based studio that designed Luna. “If treated properly against termites and covered from the rain, it can last well over 50 years.”

Adds Smyth, “The roof was not an easy build. We had a lot of leaks in the beginning. But the beauty of it is, when something breaks, you can cut out sections and replace them.”

A waterslide (there is a staircase, too) leads from the restaurant to Utopia, an underground pool club set in an artificial cave with 180-degree Indian Ocean views. LED lights that change colour in time to the music line the inside of the pool, the bar and booths.

Luna Beach Club’s Utopia pool and bar area is in an artificial cave. Photo: Ian Neubauer

“Think Ibiza meets Las Vegas, everyone in bikinis and swimsuits, with more premium options in terms of spirits and a great place to see the sunset or party late into the night,” Smyth says, on a pre-opening tour of the grounds, during which I challenge him on Nuanu’s lofty sustainability claims: “It is beyond sustainable,” the ESG section of Nuanu’s website reads.

“We have high aspirations, we have the support of our own nature and waste management teams, but we know it’s a journey. Look at Potato Head and everything they’ve done,” he says, referring to a beach club in Seminyak considered the sustainability leader in Bali. “But they took a decade to get where they are today.”

From the Luna’s pool cave, meandering pathways lined with tropical plants take us past coastal bluffs pockmarked with cocoon-like day beds to Elysium, a clifftop restaurant and event space with a curvilinear design that, from inside, looks like the ribbed cavity of a whale.

Jelly Beans is a Willy Wonka-esque desert and gelato bar. Photo: Ian Neubauer

We also visit the Luna Beer Garden and tequileria, where builders are installing stainless-steel versions of hangis – underground pit ovens used by South Pacific Islanders to smoke meat and vegetables without losing their natural juices.

Then there’s Jelly Beans, a Willy Wonka-esque dessert and gelato bar that morphs into a cocktail bar at night; and the Tree Pods, a series of bamboo tree houses interconnected by elevated climbing nets that will doubtlessly prove popular with children.

Between these venues are more oceanfront infinity pools, more luscious gardens, more tactile works of art and more giant sculptures, including a galvanised-steel frame shaped like a sitting Buddha with symbols of the moon, Earth and sun that becomes a DJ stage at night, and a seven-storey lighthouse that will also be lit up with 3D projection mapping.

Elysium is one of five F&B venues at Luna Beach Club. Photo: Instagram/@inspiralarchitects

Every level offers different interactive experiences, including a station on the top that allows guests to create a message and send it directly to space. Each message is encoded with unique visual arts and sounds, presumably to be picked up by a passing alien spaceship.

“When the client came to me with a master plan for Nuanu, most of it was already planned out,” says Hearn, who hails from Britain. “But he had a two-hectare space right on the beach and didn’t know what to do with it.

“The funny thing is they said they didn’t want a beach club. The brief was for a playground – an exploratory field where people could have all these insane user experiences,” says the architect.

A cocoon-like day pod at Luna Beach Club. Photo: Luna Beach Club

“So we came up with the idea of creating destinations within the destination, different areas that offer different holistically hedonistic experiences and workshops, all very tactile, all very flowing, and walkways that guide you from one to the next with more interesting things to see and do on the way.

“Luna is called a beach club but this is not your typical beach club.”

Relaxing elsewhere

Phuket, Thailand, is another Southeast Asian hotspot that has an established beach-club scene – so established, in fact, that even the Phuket Elephant Nature Reserve, with its “strong roots in the island’s community”, feels the need to list its own top five, as “recommended by experts”.

As well as the original, the Catch Beach Club, which opened on Bang Tao Beach in 2008, the elephant lovers also rate the Carpe Diem Beach Club (also on Bang Tao Beach); the Xana Beach Club (part of Bang Tao’s Angsana Laguna beach resort); Café Del Mar Phuket (on Kamala Beach); and Beach House Layan (on Layan Beach).

Last August, Phuket also got what’s been described as the world’s first “floating beach club”, Yona, which may not have any actual sand on board, but does have a 22-metre infinity pool surrounded by private cabanas, sun loungers and spots in which to sip cocktails.

The latest club to join the fray in Phuket is MuMu Clubhouse, which, at the time of writing, was all set to stage its launch party on March 9, complete with high-profile DJs.

The “sanctuary for kindred spirits, seekers and wanderers; connoisseurs of connection, tempo and bass” – as the owners describe it – stands beside Phuket’s largest man-made lagoon, inland from Bang Tao Beach.

The space has a capacity of 4,000 people and its owners are planning to host “Thailand’s biggest pool party” this year, named somewhat irreverently as the Songkran Water Festival.

Over in Vietnam, Da Nang most certainly doesn’t have a beach-club culture, but it’s about to get its first club, nonetheless.

Opening on March 15, NOX Beach Club extends along a 4km-long stretch of sand next to the Hoiana Resort & Golf. Part of the New World Hoiana Beach Resort, it is “inspired by Hoi An, the enchanting Unesco World Heritage town just a short drive away” and “will create a community of like-minded beach lovers, foodies and fun seekers”.

Nighttime parties on the sand are promised, but the press release suggests unrestrained hedonism – which is a selling point for some of the beach clubs in Phuket and Bali – is not quite what the owners of NOX are going for.

Mark Footer



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