A Quite Long History of Bali Hotel Architecture Part VI: GHM, Alila, and Contemporary Design

General Hotel Management (GHM) was set up in 1992 to implement an ambitious philosophy. The aim of the Singapore-based company’s visionary founders, Hans R. Jenni and Adrian Zecha, was to provide elegant, environmentally friendly accommodation in a classy, uncluttered atmosphere that also afforded intimacy, oozed style and guaranteed unparalleled customer service. The result was a group of the world’s chicest, most individualistic hotels of characteristically Asian design.

GHM took where The Beaufort Hotels left: designing, developing, and managing a distinctive array of exclusive, stylish hotels, and maintaining each hotel’s individualistic identity. Each GHM property is an original, reflecting symbiotic relationship between the hotel and the local culture to provide guests with a genuine, close-up experience of the best each destination has to offer — pretty much similar to Aman but with lower price point and bigger count of rooms.

GHM developed three tier of sub-brands. The first one is a “brand-less” collection of high end hotels with individual names, adopting the naming system of The Beaufort Hotels. The most well-known hotels from this category were The Datai Langkawi, The Legian Bali, The Nam Hai Hoi An (now Four Seasons Resort The Nam Hai, Hoi An), The Lalu Sun Moon Lake, and The Setai Miami.

The second one is The Chedi. The word “chedi” typically refers to place of meditation. In the same, way…