Of all the places the island’s energy gathers, Seminyak has always drawn the biggest crowd. This is the stretch people come to for the sunsets, some of the finest in Bali, and stay for the bars and restaurants that fill as the light goes gold and then drops into the sea. W Bali – Seminyak sits at the heart of it, and few hotels wear the neighbourhood better: the music, the fashion, the easy chic the W name has traded on for two decades, all set on one of Bali’s most stylish addresses. We came to see what two new arrivals have added to the mix, and left convinced they give a couple’s stay here a proper arc from morning to night. The first is Club Lacoste, the first dedicated Lacoste padel concept in Asia Pacific. The second is Alunê, a multi-sensorial beach club built on the footprint of the old Woobar. One belongs to the day, the other to the golden hour that follows, and between them they carry a couple’s escape from first serve to last cocktail.

Club Lacoste: padel meets French fashion

Padel is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, and Club Lacoste is the clearest sign yet that Bali is paying attention. Created with the French fashion house, it is the first dedicated Lacoste padel concept in Asia Pacific. The hotel has given the concept real room to breathe, with two dedicated courts open daily from 8 am to 8 pm to hotel guests and the wider Seminyak community alike, so the atmosphere stays social rather than sealed off. On any given morning, you might find a couple trading their first tentative rallies on one court while a pair of regulars go point for point on the next.

Adjoining the padel courts at W Bali — Seminyak is a standalone Lacoste boutique, where the fashion side of the story comes into its own. It carries the brand’s newest padel collection, including Lacoste‘s first-ever dedicated padel capsule of rackets and footwear made specifically for the sport, along with the wider racket sports range: fragrances, watches, eyewear, apparel and accessories. Half the pleasure is in the browsing. You come off court, you drift into the store, and the line between playing the sport and wearing it starts to blur, which is exactly the point of a fashion house building a padel club in the first place. Adjoining the store, and steps from the courts, is Set Café, serving French pastries, coffee, fresh coconuts and wellness tonics, the natural place to regroup between games.

First-timers and seasoned players are equally at home, so padel becomes something to take on together rather than a spectator sport for whichever partner opted out. We played a set of doubles ourselves, kitted out in a fresh Lacoste polo and cap from the boutique to look and feel the part, then collapsed courtside afterwards into the Lacoste-branded deck chairs with a chilled coconut each. Picture the shape of a morning here: a match in the cool of the early hours, a long cool-down in the pool, a wander through the boutique and a pastry at Set before lunch. It is a new kind of experience for the island, and it speaks to a certain sort of traveller, the kind who wants a little friendly competition to go with the sunbeds. It’s a blend of sport, fashion and culture in one place that is exactly what W Bali – Seminyak‘s all about.

Alunê: Seminyak’s new beach club & sunset ritual

If Club Lacoste belongs to the day, W Bali — Seminyak’s brand new beach club, Alunê, belongs to the golden hour that follows. Seminyak faces south-west, which means the sun sets straight into the ocean in front of the club every evening, and rather than treat that as a happy accident of geography, design studio WELD has built the entire venue around it. The name gives the game away: a fusion of “alunan,” the Indonesian word for the flowing rhythm of the waves, and “lune,” French for moon. That meeting of two cultures, one local and elemental, one European and romantic, runs through everything here.

The food and drink at Alunê are far more considered than the beach club norm. A lobster roll with spring onion and ikura and a catch-of-the-day sashimi, built around whatever came off the boat freshest that morning, are early standouts, alongside a run of frozen bowls coloured naturally with superfoods and fruit rather than dye. Then, as afternoon tips into dusk, Alunê shifts into its Signature Sunset Ritual: a nightly performance timed to that same south-west sunset the whole place is built for. This is where the venue earns its “multi-sensorial” billing. Dancers move through the space while a DJ plays alongside a live percussionist, and at the centre, the in-house mixologist stages a live cocktail presentation. The night we visited, that meant a rosé wine, coconut and frangipani infusion whipped up in front of the room, a cup sent out to everyone as the drumming and dancing carried on around us. It was theatre as much as a drink, and it tipped the whole evening from a good sunset into an event.

For couples who want to disappear into it properly, the private pool cabanas are the booking to chase, each with its own jacuzzi and an unbroken view of the Indian Ocean. Seminyak has no shortage of beach loungers. It has nothing quite like these.

The rest of the stay: W Bali – Seminyak for couples

Club Lacoste and Alunê are the new arrivals at W Bali — Seminyak, but they land at a hotel that was already doing a great deal right, and a stay here rewards you for building the trip around it all.

Where you sleep sets the tone. The resort has 152 guest rooms and a spread of suites, from Escape Suites to a vast bi-level Penthouse, most of them trading on either garden greenery or an outright view of the Indian Ocean. Inside, the W signatures are all present: terrazzo bathtubs, deep cotton linens, and the brand’s Whatever/Whenever service, which does what it says. For couples who want more room and more privacy, the 75 private pool villas are the draw. They range from one to three bedrooms, each with its own pool, and each colour-themed to a piece of the island: green for the rice paddies in the one-bedroom, sun-yellow sand in the two-bedroom, sunset orange in the three-bedroom, which also opens onto a central garden courtyard modelled on a traditional Balinese village compound. A villa turns the stay into something closer to a private hideaway with the run of a resort attached.

Fire, the resort’s open-flame restaurant, was the standout meal of the trip. The kitchen is built entirely around wood, fire and ash, simple ingredients turned into something layered and precise by the craft of the flame, and the room follows the theme, lit by a sculptural fire-inspired chandelier and Kecak-inspired lighting that keeps the whole space flickering. Starfish Bloo does something different and just as good, pairing Asian flavours with Mediterranean flair across elevated sharing plates and seafood. It’s also become our spot for breakfast: it has the ocean view and sea breezes, plus the most impressive buffet spread we have come across anywhere.

AWAY Spa takes its cue from the two elements the Balinese hold most sacred, wind and water, the first understood as the breath of life, the second as its source. The design follows this idea: a “blue water” ceiling arcs over the so-called Wishing Path, and a sculptural “windswept” wall draws you through to the treatment rooms, so the spa feels less like a series of closed doors and more like one continuous, flowing space. I booked the one-hour Balinese massage and came out properly reset. Worth noting: there’s a dedicated couples’ treatment room, so you don’t need to split up to unwind.

Everywhere you turn, the design keeps talking. The WET pool is shaped after the Subak, Bali’s traditional rice paddy irrigation system, and is one of the more distinctive hotel pools you will find in Seminyak, while the music runs through the resort as its own kind of architecture, from W Lounge to W Hotels’ first-ever private recording studio, all of it carrying the brand’s New York-meets-Bali energy.

Put together, it makes for a rhythm that carries a couple right through the day: a set of doubles while the morning is still cool, the pool through the heat of the afternoon, and Alunê as the light goes gold, sunset ritual, dinner and cocktails rolled into one long, easy evening. Club Lacoste and Alunê could each have arrived on their own and still turned heads. Together, at a hotel that already had the rooms, the dining and the setting to back them up, they make W Bali – Seminyak somewhere couples can settle into for days rather than pass through. Whether the draw is the padel, the fashion, the food, or a beach club that truly lives up to its patch of Seminyak sand, this is one of the most complete couples’ escapes on the island right now.