Hotel Indonesia Kempinski

On the Bundaran HI roundabout at the top of Jalan Thamrin, Hotel Indonesia Kempinski was the first international hotel built in Indonesia, opened in Jakarta in 1962 and now run by Kempinski. It is a national monument as much as a hotel. President Sukarno ordered it for the fourth Asian Games, and its position opposite the Selamat Datang monument makes it the backdrop to most of the capital's public ceremonies and demonstrations.

History

Sukarno wanted a hotel that would show a newly independent Indonesia to the athletes, officials and journalists arriving for the Asian Games of August 1962. The building was financed with war reparations from Japan and designed by the American architect Abel Sorensen, who also drew hotels for the state in Bali and Yogyakarta. It opened in August 1962, a few weeks before the Games, with a rooftop supper club and the Bali Room, which became the setting for state receptions.

For the next three decades it was the address of the foreign press in Jakarta. Correspondents covering the events of 1965 were based here, and Christopher Koch's novel The Year of Living Dangerously, filmed in 1982, placed its journalists in the hotel's Wayang Bar. The building was declared a cultural heritage site in 1993. By then it was tired, and in 2004 it closed. The Djarum group rebuilt it as part of the Grand Indonesia complex, keeping the protected elements, and it reopened in 2009 under Kempinski management.

Architecture and design

Sorensen's design is a long slab of fourteen floors raised on a lower podium, in the international style of the period, with a facade of repeated balconies and sun screens. The protected parts of the building are the Bali Room and the front block facing the roundabout. Inside, the reconstruction kept the original ballroom and its decoration while the rest of the hotel was rebuilt to current standards and linked directly to the Grand Indonesia shopping mall, the Kempinski residences and the office tower behind it.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 289 rooms and suites, large by the standards of Jakarta's newer towers, with the best of them on the upper floors looking down on the roundabout and the fountains of the Selamat Datang monument. The rooms on the front block take the view along Jalan Thamrin in both directions, and the suites include a presidential suite used by visiting delegations.

Dining

Six dining venues serve the hotel, among them Signatures, the all-day restaurant on the ground floor, OKU for Japanese cuisine, and a Paulaner Brauhaus within the Grand Indonesia complex. The rest of the mall's restaurants are a lift ride away.

Wellness

The spa and fitness centre are on the podium level, and there is an outdoor pool on the terrace above the mall.

Weddings and events

The Bali Room is the reason to hold an event here. It is the ballroom in which the republic has received its guests since 1962, and it is still one of the most requested wedding venues in central Jakarta for families who want the historic setting. Four further function rooms serve meetings and smaller receptions, and the hotel's position on the roundabout makes it a natural base for conferences in the Thamrin and Sudirman business districts.

Location

Bundaran HI, the Hotel Indonesia roundabout, is the centre of modern Jakarta. The Selamat Datang monument stands in its fountain, the Bundaran HI station of the MRT is beneath it, and Jalan Thamrin leads south to the Sudirman business district and north to the National Monument and the presidential palace. Few luxury hotels in Jakarta are as easy to find. The airport rail link or the toll road covers the roughly 25 kilometres north-west to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.