The location has been brilliantly chosen, as though the architects took a leaf from the blueprints of the Taj Mahal. As you approach by four-wheel drive along raw-red, untarred tracks, you have no sense of what lies ahead, merely glimpses of the great rock out to your right. You pull up behind a sand dune and climb. And as you reach the ridge, it's laid out before you: glittering fabric turrets, like some Bedouin encampment - and looming over it, the poised glory of Uluru.
Inspired by the luxury tented safari camps of Africa, the designers of Longitude 131 have planted a restaurant, swimming pool and 15 tents in the desert, offering stunning views of Uluru/Ayer's Rock. They have created, at a stroke, one of the most exclusive hotels in the world. It may also prove to be one of the most controversial.
Longitude 131 is just 10 kilometres from the orange monolith that is Australia's spiritual heart, two kilometres closer than any existing hotel, on the very edge of the Unesco World Heritage Site. Building it meant overcoming resistance from environmentalists, and several years of negotiations with local Aboriginals.
The 'tents' are in fact Richard Rogers-ish steel pods, with polyester roofs à la Millennium Dome to reflect heat and rain. Shining like glass, they defiantly do not blend into the landscape; on the other hand, they aren't visible from the base of the rock. Some will love them, others will hate them, but mediocre they're not. The stark modernity is surprising, given that the tone for new buildings in the Uluru National Park had been set by the 1995 Visitor Centre, an extraordinary, sinuous building designed in collaboration with the Aboriginal population.
That Australia continues to be profoundly divided by its racial past is perfectly expressed by the name given to this area: 'Uluru/Ayer's Rock'. Longitude 131 is unambiguously in the Ayer's Rock camp. Given the modern skin, the interiors are a shock: Raffles colonial kitsch, with folding hardwood chairs that were doubtless part of an Asian rainforest a few months back. Rooms are cluttered with phoney Victorian documents and dangling magnifying glasses. Each of the 15 pods celebrates an Australian 'pioneer' of some description, which means some guests enduring the bathos of inhabiting shrines to 'living legends of Australian tourism'. My room, 'Gosse', celebrated 'the first European to climb the rock' - completely ignoring the current struggle of the Aboriginal owners to stop people from clambering up it.
Is it appropriate for a hotel at Uluru to be aping the colonialist models of Africa? No one at Voyages Hotels and Resorts even seems to have asked. Anywhere else in Australia it would have passed unnoticed. But to locate a hotel in Australia's spiritual heart and avoid any reference to the Aboriginals seems shockingly insensitive.
The only concession to indigenous culture I could find at 131 was a CD of didgeridoo mood music that plays in the pod when you first arrive. It is part, a manager told me, of Voyages' 'spa philosophy'. It used to be enough for hotels to offer high comfort and superb food (and 131 does); these days they also want to give you 'a total experience of relaxation and well-being'.
But as one guest told me, he'd come to the desert to experience the silence. And one of the resort's star attractions is an open-air meal under the stars, called the 'Sounds of Silence Dinner'. So why compulsory mood music in the rooms?
The other big issue that has worried critics - environmental impact - has been far more deftly managed. Voyages claims to have the best environmental practice in the Australian tourist industry. Indeed, the entire hotel was built by hand, without earth-moving equipment, and the workmen were obliged to stick to narrow paths. The whole complex feels as though it was gently deposited on the sand by helicopter. Nevertheless, one guest I met complained that in typical five-star fashion the soap bars were changed daily, used towels were automatically laundered, and there were no signs asking guests to conserve the desert's precious water supplies when they filled the truly gigantic sinks. Talking of the bathrooms, there are screens by the sink that slide away, so that you can even contemplate the monolith while brushing your teeth.
More than any other tourist magnet on earth, Australia's Red Centre is about a single, iconic view. Each year, 400,000 international visitors (10 per cent of them British) turn up demanding to see a rock the size of the City of London light up on cue. And for a few minutes after dawn and before dusk, when the sun's rays are at their reddest, most visitors see (unless, like my sister-in-law, you get two days of torrential rain) a truly awe-inspiring spectacle. But the presence of almost half a million tourists means a lot of punters jostling for views.
When I first came four years ago, I was struck by the pervasive odour of diesel fumes, as tourists scrabbled out of their minibuses, took a snap, and were whisked off within minutes to the next stop on their tour. Longitude 131 guests get a subtler experience. For the dawn viewing they are taken not to the ring road but to a shallow dune where a guide clad in the uniform of Outback White Man - Akubra hat and Driza-Bone jacket - delivers a scripted speech on the Aboriginal myths of Uluru. His religiosity struck some of my fellow guests as irritatingly New Age, but it seemed fair enough to me - at least Aboriginal culture was getting some kind of look-in. But while the dune offered aloofness, in terms of sheer spectacle it can't compete with the plebeian eastern car park, and it's not the view I would choose for a visitor's first dawn at the rock.
Longitude 131 had a trick up its sleeve, however. At dusk, a guide led us towards the very skin of Uluru, which radiated such intense red light it made our whole group look badly sunburnt. Our awe-inspiring walk led us past Aboriginal holy places we were forbidden to photograph, but terminated at a viewing platform where waiters passed around champagne and canapes. A tad insensitive, perhaps? Would you drift around Chartres Cathedral sipping a Bloody Mary? But the fact is, sunset with a glass in your hand is a time-honoured part of the Ayer's Rock tradition. For those wanting a more mystical experience, the advice is to sneak off on your own. No one's under orders to do the organised tours; you can make your own visits to the rock, or simply stay at 131 , enjoying the peace and quiet of a small hotel with unspoilt desert vistas in all directions, where geckoes dart and birds hop, and the light is a thing of wonder.
Comments in the visitors' book from the few dozen guests to have passed through the doors since it opened in June show enthusiasm verging on the ecstatic: 'outstanding... beautiful... peaceful... serene... I feel privileged to have stayed here...' The views alone will ensure that Longitude 131 enters the charts of the world's most exclusive hotels somewhere near the top. In terms of cultural sensitivity, nul points ; but for the tourism industry, a new star is born.
Factfile
Stays at Longitude 131 cost £248 pp per night, with all meals, transfers and eco touring. Rooms can be booked directly through its parent company, Voyages (00 61 2 9339 1040).
Martin Buckley flew with Qantas (08457 47767), whose return flights from London to Ayers Rock via Darwin cost from £840.
Packages can be booked with Austravel (0870 166 2070). More information at www.australia.com.
