We stayed at Komaneka Bisma for two nights after our wedding in their maginficent chapel located at the northern end of the property. On initial inspection of the property earlier in the year, we wondered if this hotel could indeed be the best hotel in Ubud. We now know the answer.
Komaneka Bisma Pool
Komaneka Bisma Rooms
There is no doubt about it. Everyone we have spoken to is in agreement. The rooms and the aspect of the property at Komaneka Bisma cannot be beaten as they are absolutely stunning. The rooms come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but the standard suite rooms are massive. The balconies are equally impressive with stunning views over the ricefield and across the valley. The bathrooms feature deep free standing baths, twin sinks, huge rain showers and enough towels that you won’t run out. There’s a walk in wardrobe, a sofa and extremely comfortable king size bed. Sounds awesome right? Well it is in many ways, but the rooms are not perfect.
Komaneka Bisma Bath
Firstly, the LCD TVs only have 5 international channels – star sports, discovery, BBC, some fashion channel and something else. The rest are local channels which have poor reception and are useless unless you speak Bahasa Indonesia. Another major problem was the internet and the problem is two-fold. Firstly, there is a web-login screen which means your internet connection is insecure and susceptible to people spying. Worse, when using a smart phone, you have to login every single time you want to check something. This quickly becomes irritating and it becomes more convenient to turn the wifi off and just use 3G. Secondly, the internet is slow. I tried over the course of 2 days to update an app on my iphone and it just wouldn’t do it. When testing the speed with speedtest.net it came up as 5kb/s — in other words the speed of a dialup modem.
So the rooms look spectacular and are very comfortable, but the substandard TV and wifi kill the mood.
Komaneka Bisma Bed
Komaneka Bisma Service
The staff at Komaneka Bisma are fantastic. But in our experience, staff at hotels throughout Indonesia usually are fantastic and the attitude of the Komaneka Bisma staff is no better or worse than anywhere else. We can’t fault them. What we can fault with the service, however, is regarding the shuttle. Immediately after our wedding, our guests and us moved to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Through our own poor planning, we got left behind at Komaneka Bisma by our own driver and were stranded at the hotel. We asked if we could be taken the 300m to the restaurant by the hotel car and were told, while still dressed in our wedding clothes, that we would have to wait half an hour for the regular shuttle to depart even though there were plenty of cars in the driveway not being used. The hotel was under no obligation to take us to the restaurant and the staff were very polite about the situation. But the bottom line is that many other hotels in town would have driven us to the restaurant without question as part of their fantastic service. A range of other service-related issues occurred during the planning of our wedding which we believe represents a general theme of service issues at the hotel.
Komaneka Bisma Rice Field
Komaneka Bisma Food
We could talk ad infinitum about Komaneka Bisma food, but it can easily be summed up in one word — disappointing. For a 5-star hotel charging international prices, the standard of the food at the hotel should be of international 5-star standard. Indeed, compared to the restaurants of Ubud, the food at Komaneka Bisma would not feature in the top-50. This will not be of concern to many who don’t pay a whole lot of attention to food. But given that Ubud is a culinary destination, many guests will feel that the food of Komaneka Bisma is not up to standard. The included breakfast is not good. The pastry basket contains a large selection of baked goods, but they are not great quality. The french toast is dry and has a bizarre combination of bacon and strawberries — the classic combination of bacon, bananas and maple syrup works, but strawberries and bacon does not. Especially without maple syrup.
Komaneka Bisma Breakfast
We are extremely negative on Komaneka Bisma primarily because it is stunning property which is unnecessarily blighted by a few rough edges. These seemingly minor issues do add up when you are paying these prices. We paid in the region of US$250 per night, but Agoda often has better deals. A better option may well be Kajane Mua on Jalan Monkey Forest where for a similar price you can get a pool villa. Kajane Mua is also on Agoda and has some great deals.
