Alila unveils its "landmark" project in Shenzhen: Why are luxury resorts flocking to urban areas?

Recently, news came from the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base that Transsion Holdings' headquarters has signed a dual-brand hotel cooperation agreement with Hyatt's Alila and Hyatt Unbound Collection. This is Hyatt's largest signed project in 2026, and also marks Alila's first entry into Shenzhen. It is curious that as an ultra-luxury brand with vacation DNA at its core, why did Alila choose to settle in a core central business district like the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base? Alila is not the only resort brand that has expanded into urban areas. In the past two years, ultra-luxury seclusion resort brands including The Ritz-Carlton Reserve, LUX*, Six Senses have all come to cities tacitly, which seems to be a well-understood decision for this type of top luxury brands. Why did they choose to move into cities collectively? For them, is urban vacation a capital game or a strategic consideration?

Alila Signs Cooperation Deal at Transsion Headquarters

In March 2025, Transsion won the T208-0071 plot in the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base with 657 million yuan, with a total investment of 1 billion yuan. It has only been one year since Transsion moved into its new headquarters building in the Liuxian Cave Headquarters Base.

The urgent investment in acquiring the plot in the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base is driven by Transsion's need to upgrade its headquarters positioning to match the growth of the enterprise, which perfectly aligns with the corporate vision stated in the selection plan released by the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology.

The selection plan mentions that the project is positioned as a "global headquarters for the industrial ecosystem of intelligent terminals", takes "vertical ecological community" as the core concept, realizes the deep integration of industrial functions and urban services through three-dimensional spatial layout, and builds a smart headquarters ecosystem featuring "production and service integration".

While the macro concept has been laid as the foundation, the micro engineering data is also quite impressive. The total floor area ratio of the project is about 68,000 square meters, including 34,300 square meters of office space, 25,500 square meters of hotel space, and 5,200 square meters of commercial space, with a maximum building height of 150 meters.

Visually, 68,000 square meters is roughly equivalent to 10 standard football fields, a medium-to-large commercial complex, or even a large logistics center. Such a considerable volume has long gone beyond the traditional definition of a headquarters building, and is more like a micro city. Transsion invites its clients and partners into the same building, where the hotel retains people, the commercial space serves people, and the office space connects people, eventually forming a 24-hour operating industrial ecosystem for intelligent terminals.

Even excluding the project's own positioning and planning, there are three special highlights for the dual-brand hotel to choose this location.

The first highlight is the property owner identity. Alila's past property owners are mainly real estate developers, state-owned cultural tourism groups and professional hotel developers. Transsion is a domestic mobile phone manufacturer that dominates the African market, ranking third in global mobile phone shipments in 2024. This cross-border layout in the hotel industry makes it an atypical property owner.

Transsion, which started its business with low-cost mobile phones, invested 1 billion yuan to build its headquarters and introduced Alila, making a heavy cross-border layout in the ultra-luxury sector from the mass consumer goods industry, which stands out as a sharp contrast among all previous property owners of Alila.

The second highlight is the "previous connection" between the architecture and the brand. The project is designed by Singapore-based WOHA Designs, which has a deep historical tie with Alila. Alila's global flagship project, Alila Villas Uluwatu in Bali, is one of their representative works.

At the same time, it is also the "masterpiece that made Alila famous", the benchmark of ultra-luxury cliff resorts in Bali, and the first hotel in Bali to obtain the world's highest standard environmental protection certification.

WOHA is internationally renowned for its design concepts of "green architecture" and "vertical city", and its representative works including PARKROYAL on Pickering and Pan Pacific Orchard in Singapore have won a number of international awards.

Now, this firm will take charge of the design of a 150-meter-tall building in Shenzhen Bay. Perhaps Transsion's headquarters will become a "breathing vertical garden", and the luxurious core of this garden just chooses Alila. From the cliffs of Bali to the skyline of Shenzhen Bay, across mountains, seas and 17 years of time, WOHA and Alila have completed a long-awaited "reunion".

The third highlight is the hotel ecosystem of Shenzhen Bay itself. The Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base is the core business district of Shenzhen in the future, positioned as an "urban living room", covering an area of about 117 hectares with a planned total floor area of 5.2 million square meters. It is the development area with the highest planning level and the strongest industrial agglomeration in Shenzhen at present. Headquarters of more than ten enterprises including DJI, China Merchants Bank, Shenzhen Metro Group, ZTE, and OPPO have settled here. The overall ecosystem features high-density, high-intensity urban business and bustling metropolitan atmosphere.

In terms of hotels, top luxury brands including Waldorf Astoria, Regent, and Janu have gathered here, forming a luxury matrix targeting high-end business crowds. However, most of Alila's properties are located in secluded places with excellent natural landscapes, which are completely different from the temperament of this business district.

Although the Transsion headquarters occupies the front row of the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base, with a permanent unobstructed sea view, which can provide a foothold for Alila's "natural seclusion" gene and inject scarce vacation and seclusion feelings into the property, it still inevitably has to face head-to-head competition with established luxury brands such as Waldorf Astoria and Regent.

It can be said that from the property owner to the design firm and then to the customer group, Alila is not taking the path it is most familiar with — it implants its brand with strong vacation genes into a steel-and-concrete urban headquarters, making it the most "unique" property among all Alila hotels around the world.

25 Years Since the Brand's Establishment

To understand why Alila settled in the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base, we need to trace back the brand's geographical migration in the past 15 years. Its story is exactly a spatial narrative anchored by hotels.

Alila's birth was extraordinary from the very beginning.

Mark Edleson, the founder of Alila, used to be the vice president of Citibank. In 1983, after leaving the bank, he returned to Bali, the place he had been longing for. At that time, he already owned a house there, and met a group of friends who had spotted the business opportunities of vacation tourism in Bali. They planned to build a boutique hotel on the banks of the Ayung River in Ubud, where the original natural features were still well preserved. Almost at the same time, shortly after Aman's first hotel Amanpuri opened, Zecha, the founder of Aman who was eager to expand and consolidate his reputation, also set his sights on this treasure land.

Therefore, the two hit it off. After that, Edleson deeply participated in Aman's expansion, and assisted Zecha in completing the legal and financial framework construction of hotel projects including Amankila, Amanusa, Amanwana and Amanjiwo. It can be said that the birth of these classic works is inseparable from Edleson's efforts.

Driven by ambition, however, Edleson was not willing to play second fiddle. In 1993, he became a partner of GHM (General Hotel Management), standing on an equal footing with Zecha. Two years later, he founded Mandara Spa, the world's first cross-hotel chain spa brand, which expanded from Bali to Japan, Honolulu and other places within only 6 years, covering 45 hotels.

At that time, Zecha held absolute sway in GHM, and cooperated with his exclusive designers Kerry Hill and Jaya Ibrahim to create ace works such as The Datai (GHM's debut work), The Nam Hai (GHM's flagship in Vietnam) and The Setai (GHM's benchmark for entering the North American market). However, as one of the co-founders of GHM, Edleson could only manage The Chedi and Serai with lower positioning.

This huge gap in power and resource allocation laid the groundwork for the two to go their separate ways later. Eventually, Edleson and another partner Franky Tjahyadikarta obtained the two hotels in Bali that they had developed during the GHM period, and founded Alila independently.

It is no exaggeration to say that Alila did not start from scratch, but split from the Aman system, with the capital acumen of a financier, the top genes of the Aman system, and two already famous legendary hotels. Named after the Sanskrit word "Alila" which means "surprise", it started a new luxury narrative.

The two founding hotels that were renovated and rebranded in Bali have injected strong tropical vacation genes into Alila since their birth: coast, jungle and terraced fields together constitute Alila's initial spatial motif.

Three years later, Alila moved its headquarters from Bali to Singapore, marking the brand's transformation from a regional collection of Indonesian resorts to an international boutique hotel brand, and also indicating Alila's ambition for the entire Southeast Asian market.

Five years later, Alila Villas Uluwatu designed by WOHA became widely famous, which became a watershed in Alila's brand history. It not only became Alila's flagship, but also became the first Indonesian resort in the world to obtain the highest EarthCheck certification, and redefined the standard of "sustainable luxury". In the same year, Alila Diwa Goa opened in Goa, India, marking the brand's expansion out of Indonesia and bringing tropical charm to the Indian subcontinent.

In 2016, Commune Hotels merged with Destination Hotels to establish the holding company Two Roads Hospitality, which included Alila. It was also in this year that Alila Anji in Zhejiang officially opened, marking the brand's entry into the Chinese market. Located deep in the bamboo sea, Anji property continues the brand's vacation philosophy of "staying away from the hustle and bustle of the city and exploring the fun of nature".

In the following two years, Alila opened two new properties in Yangshuo and Wuzhen in China at a rate of one new store per year. In 2018, the same year when the Wuzhen property opened, Hyatt Hotels Corporation acquired its parent company Two Roads Hospitality for 480 million US dollars, and Alila was subsequently incorporated into the Hyatt group. The Wuzhen property implants the brand's vacation genes into the texture of the thousand-year-old ancient town in the Yangtze River Delta water town; the global distribution network and membership system brought by Hyatt are the scale advantages that independent boutique brands can hardly match.

After 25 years of development since its establishment, Alila has come a long way from the tropical charm of Bali, and every site selection brings "surprise" just as its name suggests, constantly redefining the spatial carrier of luxury.

Alila's Path of Moving into Cities

After entering China, Alila did not insist on continuing its tropical vacation genes rooted in mountains and rivers. On the contrary, it turned to cities, and everything started from Hyatt's acquisition.

On June 30, 2020, Hyatt announced that it would cease the management of Alila Yangshuo Sugar House. The core reasons behind this include poor operation of the managed hotel, unsatisfactory performance, external disasters, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and conceptual differences between the brand and the property owner. Finally, the hotel was delisted and operated independently by the property owner.

Only half a year later, Alila Anji was officially shut down due to environmental issues such as being located within the reservoir red line and involving water source protection, which was stopped by the government's planning adjustment. Overnight, Alila only had the Wuzhen property left in China. What's more severe is that another Alila project affected by the environmental protection policy of the Taihu Lake Basin was aborted, and Alila East Lake Wuhan failed to open due to problems such as project planning or operation adjustment.

This was Alila's darkest moment. A brand named after "surprise" seemed to be left with only shocks. In the desperate situation, Hyatt pressed a key steering button for Alila: moving into cities.

In 2024, Alila Shanghai opened on Weihai Road in Jing'an District. This 38-story high-rise transformed from the former Four Seasons Hotel Shanghai is adjacent to Zhang Yuan, and designed by the designer Ju Bin, becoming Alila's first urban resort hotel in Greater China.

Different from previous Alila properties rooted in mountains and rivers, the Shanghai property is transformed from the original Four Seasons Hotel, enjoying a core location and historical landscape, and inheriting the mature customer base of the Four Seasons at the original site. This allows Alila to no longer simply rely on the natural seclusion wild luxury concept, and can also attract a large number of ordinary customers.

Of course, Hyatt's empowerment is indispensable for Alila to gain the strength to enter cities. Alila's founder Mark Edleson is good at the narrative and design of resorts, but the operation logic of urban hotels is completely different. Indicators such as core location resources, business customer group management, and stable annual occupancy rate all need careful consideration. After Hyatt acquired Alila in 2018, the group injected its global urban hotel network, core location negotiation capabilities and standardized operation system into the brand.

It is no exaggeration to say that without Hyatt, Alila could not obtain such a core urban plot as the Weihai Road property (the former Four Seasons Hotel) in Shanghai. Moving into cities is the second door that Hyatt opened for Alila.

Long before expanding into Shanghai, Alila had already entered the city centers of Southeast Asian cities such as Solo and Jakarta in Indonesia, and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and its urban genes have been precipitated for many years. The opening of the Shanghai property is a key measure for Hyatt Group to expand this gene to the Greater China market. Since then, Alila's development in China is no longer trapped in the shackles of traditional resorts, which feature large land occupation, long construction cycle, and are affected by seasons and climates, and has had brand new imagination space.

However, Hyatt did not forcibly change the genetic background of Alila. The opening of Alila Dong'ao Island in Zhuhai in 2025 can be regarded as a precise return of the Alila brand, which also amplifies the brand's strength in the vacation sector. It integrates composite business forms including island vacation, conference, wedding and health care, not only retaining the brand's good at the vacation core of slow experience and deep healing, but also expanding the profit boundary of high-end vacation, enabling the brand to realize business model innovation in its familiar vacation field.

Urban Vacation: How Seclusion Hotels Create a "Different World"

Shortly after the news of Alila's signing at Transsion Headquarters came out, The Ritz-Carlton Reserve also followed up and signed a deal in Shanghai. In the past two years, from LUX* Guangzhou and Six Senses Beijing Zhongguancun to Alila Shenzhen Transsion and The Ritz-Carlton Reserve Shanghai, they have all entered cities by coincidence, seemingly trying to reinvent the grammar of seclusion in cities.

But the really key premise for making urban vacation a success is: whether the brand can create private narratives and sensory isolation of the same granularity in the high density of cities.

Traditional resorts achieve this through geographical distance: cliffs, islands and jungles naturally form a barrier. But cities do not have such geographical gifts, which depends more on whether the brand has the ability to control space.

Aman Tokyo creates a vertical barrier with the whole 33-story building, sets the lobby on the underground floor, making guests disappear from the ground; Six Senses London implants a 1,500-ping urban oasis in a century-old department store, using the thick walls of the historic building to isolate the hustle and bustle next to Hyde Park; the internal courtyard of Capella Sydney is completely enclosed, becoming a secret garden only open to hotel guests.

The success of these projects proves that urban vacation is not as simple as moving a resort into the city, but to rebuild a "different world" in the city.

But on the other side of the coin, urban vacation is also very likely to become a false proposition. When the brand only copies the visual symbols of resorts (log, linen, infinity pool) into office buildings, but fails to solve the core proposition of "sense of isolation", consumers, surrounded by the glass curtain walls of CBD, listening to the traffic noise downstairs and looking at the overtime lights in the adjacent office building, will find that the so-called seclusion is nothing but a decoration trick.

This is exactly the challenge faced by Alila at Transsion Headquarters in Shenzhen Bay. In the world's first hotel located in an enterprise headquarters building, it needs to prove not only its design capability, but also the extreme operation of creating absolute privacy in the environment of shared elevators, passing-through lobbies and flowing business crowds. It is very difficult, but not impossible. Let's wait and see...

This article is from the WeChat official account"Space Explorer", written by Qin Minhui, and published with authorization from 36Kr.