Presented by: The Westin Jakarta
The Westin Jakarta recently opened its doors on Jl. Rasuna Said, one of only a handful of Starwood properties in the city.
It’s a hotel of superlatives, boasting the highest rooms, the highest lobby and soon the highest al-fresco bar in Jakarta.
However, The Westin Jakarta offers a qualitatively superior experience for its guests, whether business travelers looking for a respite while on the road, or denizens of Jakarta stalking the perfect selfie while at brunch or afternoon tea.
We’ve been behind the scenes at The Westin Jakarta, talking with General Manager Arun Kumar. Here’s what we’ve learned about the hotel, which spans levels 50 to 69 of its tower in Jakarta.
1 Get Married–or Get the Party Started
While The Westin Jakarta caters to the business traveler, the hotel was also designed as an exquisite space for functions–and weddings. The grand Java Ballroom, located on the ground level with easy access to the street, can accommodate 1,200 guests in a standing configuration, or 650 while seated.
The ballroom itself features an undulating wooden trellis that weaves its way along the building’s entire length, in contrast to the wallpaper favored by other venues.
The effect created by the ballroom’s designers, Singapore-based Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA), was stunning, Arun said. “It was always a discussion of more space versus more design with HBA. In the end, HBA were so enamored with the design that we were convinced and went along with it.”
Inside the lusciously designed space are more than a dozen immense chandeliers designed by Ricardo Lightworks in Hong Kong, under the direction of DBA.
The chandeliers incorporate the floral touch that Westin hotels are known for in the form of dozens of elegantly crafted amber trumpet flowers, made from glass, hanging from a mirrored center, giving it the appearance of a cascade of blossoms.
The chandelier motif appears throughout the hotel, most notably in the Sky Lobby on level 52.
Packages for weddings in the Java Ballroom start at Rp 750 million and include extras such as a night’s stay in the Bridal Room, with special set up and honeymoon turndown style; five complimentary one-night Westin Room stays for family as well as a 90-minute traditional massage for the couple, among many other benefits.
Attached to the Java Ballroom are three floors of banquet kitchens, including a dedicated Chinese kitchen, to ensure that meals can be served halal.
Soon to be opened by the Java Ballroom is the Extension Foyer, located just outside the hotel. It’s a glass-enclosed area that’s perfect for barbecues and live cooking stations.
A street-level location-in addition to a car park with more than 1,000 spaces-makes it easy for guests to share your special day and for wedding vendors to help get the show started.
2 Get to work
The Westin Jakarta also makes it easy for a traveler to get down to work. “We are mostly a business hotel,” Arun says. “What Westin offers for the business traveler is the highest level of bandwidth in the city. It will scale to 150MB. Business travelers need the speed of the internet and connections to it without a lot of complications.”
The Westin Jakarta also has you covered if you need to get to work outside its second-floor business center.
There’s Tangent™, in the Sky Lobby on the 52nd floor. It’s a cluster of sleek, teardrop-shaped tables crafted from wood, equipped with rotating high stools and flatscreen computers, including computers, all connected to the internet.
Adjacent to Tangent™ is a fully equipped 4-person meeting room, so you can collaborate with your business partners, conference call and brainstorming with smart technology and intuitive design.
“As a brand, Westin is very vibrant and tuned into customers,” Arun says. "We were one of the first to introduce credit cards, one of the first to introduce in-room dining, one of the first to introduce voicemail. Westin was the first brand to catch onto guests who were not looking for a big business center, and started to offer a community table with computers and internet. It is a place to collaborate, stay connected with your colleagues across the table or across the globe and enhance productivity at its convenience. It's called Tangent™, and now the other brands have caught on.”
3 Many Meetings
Just above the Java Ballroom, The Westin Jakarta offers eight exquisite conference rooms, elegantly designed and fully equipped for meetings large and more intimate.
The space is quickly accessed from the ground level by a brief escalator or elevator ride. The Padang and Medan rooms, each of which can be divided into a second area for a total of four rooms, are bathed in natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows that are demarcated by the building’s steel architectural elements.
Also look for the interior conference spaces. There’s the Yogakarta room, which can also be subdivided into two rooms, as well as the Surabaya and Bandung rooms, the latter of which also has an atrium and dedicated reception space that’s perfect as a pre-function room, or to host bodyguards and entourages for VVIP function.
On technology and amenities, The Westin Jakarta ensures that the rooms, which feature wooden wall paneling, come with projectors and a screen that can be lowered to block the street view.
The Padang and Medan meeting space are located by the Retreat Lounge: A place for collective coffee breaks equipped with leather designer chairs and divans, along with floor-to-ceiling windows that afford views of Jl. Satrio.
The Retreat Lounge, which can also be configured for product launches or other set-ups, such as a classroom of dinner, is a comfortable place to take five and enjoying a free flow of coffee, tea or pastries.
Meanwhile the Bandung, Surabaya and Yogyakarta meeting spaces also share their own dedicated lounge, with most of the amenities offered by the Retreat.
Don’t get so involved in your meeting and miss the décor. Hanging on the walls nearby are exquisitely crafted wooden installations and facades designed by the local Indonesian artists. There’s also a full business center, comprising several recessed workstations done in gorgeous dark brown wood, as well as a 10-person conference room, television and whiteboard.
4 A Lobby in the Sky
Ask Arun Kumar, The Westin Jakarta’s general manager, about what makes his hotel different from the other starred properties and he’ll gesture at the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Jakarta from the hotel’s private dining room on its 51st-level Seasonal Tastes all-day-dining restaurant.
"Well, you're sitting here and looking at it right now. You pay for the room and the view's free,” Kumar says. “There's a lot going on in this city, but as you go higher, you can look at the expanse and understand how big a city it is. When people come into Jakarta, they don't really think of this as a megacity. Here you get a 360-degree view and can't see the end of it.”
To get to the view, take a minute-long elevator ride from the ground level to the Sky Lobby on the 52dn floor. The doors open and you might have a vertiginous moment when suddenly facing immense windows offering an expansive perspective on the city. Turning right toward the reception area and you note that the windows virtually run the entire circumference of The Westin Jakarta, offering true 360-degree views of the megalopolis.
The four reception islands are flanked by a luxurious sofa nook, while above the ceilings are dominated by the trumpet-flower chandeliers seen in the Java Ballroom. Guests will be offered The Westin’s “Elixir” welcome beverage of fresh water infused with the delicious tastes of luscious, locally harvested fruit.
Guests and patrons are welcome to walk around the floor, to admire the view. You can peer down the glass-and-marble stairways to the 51st floor, which hosts The Westin Jakarta’s all-day dining restaurant–more on that later–while admiring the vertical gardens and immense ikat pita (ribbon) sculptures crafted by the designers at Silver Fox.
At the opposite end of the Sky Lobby level is a café, serving sandwiches and pastries, as well as coffees and Jira teas, under trumpet-flower chandeliers, marble-topped tables, lamps crafted from copper and comfortable lounger and armchairs.
Wooden trellises separate the lounge into distinct areas, while still allowing for natural light to stream through, giving the lounge a sense of privacy in a public place.
One day I sat watching the reflections of the traffic 50-or-so stories below shimmering against the glass of the skyscrapers as the Blade-Runner like conurbations of Taman Anggrek and Kelapa Gading–15 kilometers distant–could be seen.
While there was haze the day I met Arun, he assures me that you can see the sea, as well as the mountains in West Java, when the skies are clear.
5 Room with a View
The rooms at The Westin Jakarta were devised by HBA to maximize the gorgeous views afforded by the floor-to-ceilings that dominate individual guest spaces.
Your luggage can be kept out of sight in the carpeted walk-in closet that is immediately adjacent to the door.
Inside the closet, there’s a guest safe, adequate closet space and cubbyholes to store your suitcase and hang your clothes, freeing up the rest of the room for you to enjoy.
The bathroom abuts the closet, featuring a glass wall, so you can enjoy the full-sized bathtub and your own personal view of the city. A commode and Heavenly Shower are encased in separate glass areas. The effect is to make the already-generously-sized rooms seem even more spacious.
Each room features a Heavenly Bed-which is worthy of discussion in a separate item (see below)-that is flanked by a nightstand clock with a standard USB port for smartphones that allows you to play your own music. There’s also a 55” smart television that uses the “screen mirroring” technology built into Android smartphones, so you can project your movies and YouTube videos–or even What’s App chats–in a commanding way. The television guides you through the hook-up process easily and painlessly.
Keeping the business traveler in mind, the television also offers HDMI and AV connections when you need to get to work.
Most important for road warriors: You room’s desk is kept clear, so you don't have to move stuff off of it to get to work. There’s just a gorgeous leather blotter that’s integrated with the desktop. The desk chair is ergonomic, designed by HBA and made locally.
In addition to a well-stocked mini-bar, the in-room Hitaca coffee makers use Illy coffee capsules for your morning pick-me-up.
A note on design: In addition to the works of local artists that grace the walls, guest rooms rooms also feature carpets with prominent floral motifs, continuing the botanic design touch for which The Westin hotels are known.
Room rundown: The hotel will have 108 king rooms and 69 double rooms in its "Westin" category, ranging from 46 to 48 square meters (sqm), 31 Premium rooms, 8 Westin club rooms, 23 Renewal rooms, 11 executive suites, one Westin suite and one presidential Suite.
Pro tip: Newlyweds-or anyone seeking an extra touch of luxe¬-should try one of the hotel’s Renewal rooms, all of which are corner rooms that offer floor-to-ceiling views of the city on two sides. The bathtub in the Renewal room also has an unobstructed view, so you can enjoy a sunset soak in style.
6 Serene slumber
The Westin Jakarta says that it doesn’t offer guests a place to sleep, it offers a place to dream. The Heavenly Bed is the secret to such restful sleep. "We launched the Heavenly Bed in 1999," Arun said. "Westin is really one of the first brands to think about guests sleeping."
It comprises 10 layers of comfort: The bed frame, mattress, mattress cover, three sheets, blanket, blanket cover, duvet and duvet cover.
The sleep specialists at King Koil are behind the luxuriant mattress, which are the only ones in the world certified by the International Chiropractor Association.
Pro tip: There’s currently a full-scale Heavenly Bed tucked away in a niche in the Sky Lobby on the 52nd floor, if you’d like to indulge for a moment and experience the comfort for yourself. But please, please: No napping. Look for the bed immediately adjacent to The Tangent workstation.
7 Little Pieces of Heaven
According to Arun, The Westin’s “Heavenly” programs consistently lift the brand’s game at every touch point with a guest.
Take the Heavenly Shower found in each room that sprinkles water down on you as if in a tropical rainforest shower.
The Westin Jakarta will also soon open its Heavenly Spa on the 50th level. It will include one of the very few hotels in the city with a temperature-controlled indoor swimming pool.
Concerned with the wellness of its guests, the Westin Jakarta’s fitness center loans workout clothing and sneakers by New Balance for a nominal fee. Hard-core runners can also use the free shuttle to the track at the Seomantri Stadium, located just a few steps away near the Plaza Festival collection of open-all-night eateries.
8 Competitive Advantage: Starwood Preferred Guests
Arun recommends registering for Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) program, which you can do quickly and painlessly via apps downloadable from the Google Play and Apple App Store.
Not only is SPG a loyalty program where you accumulate redeemable points based on how much you spend on rooms and meals; there are more benefits, such as a personal concierge to take care of your every travel requirement that kicks in after a fairly modest spend.
“Many loyalty programs don't have this,” Arun says. “We offer much more than many other programs-and are more generous, I must say."
9 Henshin: The Best Is Yet to Come
Ask Arun about what The Westin Jakarta has in store and he doesn’t pause before answering.
"My favorite part is not yet built: The Henshin Restaurant on levels 67, 68 and 69: Three levels of restaurant! It's a multi-level, multi-dimensional, absolutely fabulous food and beverage venue.”
Henshin, slated to open toward the end of the year, will have what Arun describes as Jakarta’s highest al-fresco bar; as well as a lounge; an 80-seat restaurant and an entire level of private dining rooms, all with floor-to-ceiling windows; a banquet space as well as an open-air terrace.
“It is going to be a complete destination,” Arun says of Henshin, which will sit in the three-story dome that tops the hotel. “It will be ‘the’ place to go to in the city.”
The restaurant will also feature Nikkei cuisine–a fusion of the cooking traditions of Japan and Peru, which hosts one of the largest populations of emigre Japanese in the world. Hajime Kasuga, a renowned Nikkei chef and restaurateur from Lima, has been working with The Westin Jakarta to develop the menu.
For guests and patrons of The Westin Jakarta, the best, it seems, is yet to come.
