Deborah Hung just celebrated her birthday with a couple friends including Vladimir Doronin at Amanpuri a few days ago.

Doronin must be very excited, as this was just after his ex-business partner Amanat was found guilty of securities fraud in US federal district court and may end up in the slammer for as long as a decade.

yeah, seems to be for the online retailer Revolve. They have an Instagram campaign of sorts where they go around the world and bring “influencers”. Even high-end luxury isn’t immune from social media, so hopefully Aman handles groups like this without negatively affecting other guests, From the looks of it, probably 20-30 people.

Hopefully... not really optimistic! But most hotel groups jumped on the influencer train.

I know some have complained about the service at Amangiri not being quite to the standard of the Asian Amans...and that’s likely accurate on average. But Amangiri is also close to or at 100% occupancy more than almost any other Aman property. Its unbelievable and tremendously remote location contributes to both.

In the end, we found the Amangiri service level to be not particularly different from that of our most recent stay at Amanbagh in Jan 2017–despite constant rhetoric herein to the contrary. We actually found the food/beverage experience to be better at Amangiri than Amanbagh.

Even at 100% occupancy during our Amangiri stay in April 2015, we still had a glorious time and largely excellent service. But we also were not bothered to share any issue or problem we experienced and have it addressed immediately—and those issues were immediately addressed. As a result, we had a truly wonderful and memorable time. If you’re not likely to bother a manager when things go awry, you may be disappointed here (as can be true at a suspirisngly large proportion of luxury hotels, even Aman hotels, IMO). OTOH, if you’re not afraid to share, you’ll be in great hands.

We arranged with the food/beverage team for a special anniversary tasting menu dinner to pair with the wines we brought with us. Their team did an extraordinary job. Planning that dinner was wonderfully easy and productive for us...but then I didn’t want to plan a city event that I could plan anywhere. Again, if you allow the team the chance to do something special and don’t overly micro-manage the process, you will be very pleased if I had to guess. But if you’re looking for city luxury polish, you’re just not looking in the right place.

Setting expectations inappropriate to the location is something that I think sends people into tizzies of their own creation.