Amanpuri

In 1988 a hotelier named Adrian Zecha opened forty pavilions on a former coconut plantation above Pansea Beach, on the west coast of Phuket, and called the place Amanpuri, Sanskrit for "place of peace". He had bought the land for a house and built a hotel instead. The name became a brand, and the brand became Aman, which now runs more than thirty hotels on five continents. Amanpuri is where it began.

History

Zecha, an Indonesian-born publisher and hotel investor, had visited Phuket in the mid-1980s with friends looking for a site for a holiday home. The headland above Pansea Beach was too large for one house, so he built a small hotel to share the cost. He hired Ed Tuttle, an American architect living in Paris, and the pair produced a resort unlike anything on the island at the time: no lobby to speak of, no lifts, pavilions hidden among the coconut palms and a staff trained to remember names rather than room numbers. It opened in January 1988. The private villas on the adjoining slope, built to order for owners and let through the hotel, followed over the next decade. Aman left Zecha's ownership in 2014 and has since belonged to Vladislav Doronin's group, but Amanpuri has stayed with the company throughout.

Architecture and design

Tuttle drew on the temples and pavilions of Ayutthaya, the old Siamese capital. Each pavilion has a steep tiled roof with gilded finials, teak columns and a sala, or open-sided terrace, for sitting outdoors. The buildings are set along stone stairways that climb and fall through the coconut grove, so that the walk from the beach to the pool at the top of the hill passes through shade all the way. At the summit, the black-tiled main pool lies between the reception and the restaurant and looks straight out to the Andaman Sea. The materials are teak, Thai stone and terracotta, and the planting is the original plantation.

Rooms and suites

The resort counts 40 pavilions and a larger number of villas, the latter with two to nine bedrooms, private pools and their own cooks. The pavilions have teak floors, a king bed, a dressing area and a bathroom with a sunken tub, and all open onto a sala; the ones nearest the beach are closest to the water, the ones on the hill have the longer views. The villas are the choice of families and of the hotel's longest-staying guests.

Dining

The Thai restaurant beside the main pool serves the regional dishes of the south, and an Italian restaurant and a Japanese counter complete the menu. The beach terrace serves lunch at the sand. A bar in the main building looks over the pool and the sea.

Wellness

The Aman Spa was enlarged in the 2010s into a wellness centre with a medical and holistic programme, hydrotherapy, a gym and a Muay Thai ring, with treatment pavilions in the grove. Beyond the main pool, the beach has its own water sports base, and the resort keeps a fleet of boats for day trips to Phang Nga Bay and the islands.

Weddings and events

Amanpuri hosts weddings on the beach, on the terrace of the main pool and in the villas, where the larger houses hold their own ceremonies and dinners. The whole resort can be booked for a wedding. Company retreats use the villas and the restaurants rather than any conference room, and the hotel does not publish event capacities.

Location

Pansea Beach is a cove on the west coast of the island, between Surin Beach and Bang Tao, and the hotel occupies the headland at its southern end. Phuket International Airport is about 25 minutes north by road; Patong, the island's main resort town, lies about 20 minutes to the south, and the old town of Phuket about 40 minutes. The beach is calm from November to April, the high season, and open to the monsoon swell in the summer months. Among the hotels of Phuket, Amanpuri is the oldest of the luxury resorts on the island and the one by which the others are measured.