THE PUNCH INTERVIEWS
Meet Sofyan, general manager of REVĪVŌ Wellness Resort
REVĪVŌ Wellness Resort is a sustainable wellness hotel offering comprehensive personalised retreats to teach self-awareness, mindfulness and help guests reach mind-body transformation.
What is your story in hospitality?
My name is Sofyan. I came from Klungkung.
I started my career in hospitality at Ubud from the normal five star hotel, which is from Ritz Carlton and then I grew up my career continuously going to Aman Resort. In relation to that, I went a few times in several hotel also, which is Westin Resort and then Karma Kandara and other properties in Bali.
REVĪVŌ is the first resort that I jumped into a wellness resort and this is my first career in a wellness resort.
What is your position here at REVĪVŌ Wellness Resort and what is your day-to-day work?
My position is general manager at REVĪVŌ Wellness Resort Bali. My day-to-day work is to pampering the guests and then making sure that the guests are feeling convenient, comfortable and enjoying their stay with us. Since REVĪVŌ is not like a normal hotel so the journey will start from the moment that they woke up until the moment they went to bed. I’m here to make sure the whole journey of guests is running smoothly during their stay there.
What is the story of REVĪVŌ?
The owner of REVĪVŌ is a creator of COMO Shambala and he’s one of the owner of Aman Villa previously. He was asking me “Is there any Wellness Resort here in Nusa Dua? Not in Ubud or Canggu.” And I said that we don’t have that so far. And by those that the owner was thinking that we should create one in Nusa Dua because it’s a nice ambience that we had here and it’s close to the airport also. Then by then we’re creating this wellness resort together with the former CEO that we had.
REVĪVŌ means “live again”. So the journey and the education of us to educate our guests into life changing experience, this is what we expected to have.
What is the relation between REVĪVŌ and sustainability?
REVĪVŌ is a sustainable resort. In terms of sustainability, everything has been sustained. In regard to non-plastic that we are using here at REVĪVŌ we do also have some solar panels available at Revivo, and the water treatment plant is available also at REVĪVŌ. The waste management we separated the waste and then we are using or maximizing the waste to be zero waste. For example, we are using the waste from our kitchen as compost or fertilizer in our permaculture garden.
What do you think should happen for the local communities around Bali to understand the importance of taking care of waste and being sustainable for the future Bali and tourism in Bali?
How to adopt this condition into social life, into people next to us, into our neighbors, is quite challenging. It’s not difficult, but it’s challenging. Education is the most important thing. We need to educate them on how to treat simple things like garbage and then how to treat water. We need also to understand if the government will support us.
It’s good to have some actions done by the communities. But if it’s not supported by the government, it will be really hard. So this is where the government needs to be involved and discuss further how to protect Bali moving forward from this before it happened and to maintain the harmony and also the sustainability of Bali moving forward.
Can you give me an example of the three top treatments that you’re offering here in terms of wellness?
We had six signature programs all along, and then we had 60 treatments that we had here in the resort. The three programs that are famous is emotional balance mind trainings, detox and weight loss, and then the immune reset programs.
Talking about sustainability, how it relates to this program is we are not only maintained the sustainability is not only maintain the environment, but also to maintain the people, the social life.
To maintain the people is not as simple as when we are saying that. So it is a challenge for us to understand and to make sure that people are happy first, how to make people have a contentment in life is by making them have a balance of mind and body, because that’s the most important thing. Once you have the mind balance and then with the body balance, then you’ll have the nice harmonious environments of your bodies.
What do you think is a good relationship between wellness and sustainability?
Talking about sustainability, how it relates to this program is we are not only maintained the sustainability is not only maintain the environment, but also to maintain the people, the social life.
To maintain the people is not as simple as when we are saying that. So it is a challenge for us to understand and to make sure that people are happy first, how to make people have a contentment in life is by making them have a balance of mind and body, because that’s the most important thing. Once you have the mind balance and then with the body balance, then you’ll have the nice harmonious environments of your bodies.