Hoba Wawi, Wanokaka, on the south coast of Sumba, which the house places 400km east of Bali. Claude and Petra Graves reached the beach in 1988 looking for a wave and built the resort they called Nihiwatu between 1988 and 1994; Chris Burch acquired a majority stake in 2012 and rebuilt it with James McBride. It is this Library’s clearest case of a resort whose philanthropic arm is older, and better documented, than its hotel business.
The house
The Graves found the beach the house still calls Nihiwatu, a name its own account ties to the mortar stone on the shore. That account puts their arrival in 1988 and says that during the development of Nihiwatu, between 1988 and 1994, the founders lived much as the villagers around them did. Out of that period came the Sumba Foundation, which both the house and Forbes credit to the original founders. Chris Burch came in 2012 with his three sons and acquired a majority stake that year, in partnership with James McBride, a hotelier the house describes as having spent fourteen years at The Ritz-Carlton.
Forbes reports that Burch found six bungalows and two villas above a 2.5km beach, and that he put $35 million into the purchase from the Graves, about 100 further acres and the rebuild of a property it describes as nearly 500 acres. Renamed NIHI Sumba, the house was named the number one hotel in the world by Travel + Leisure in 2016 and again in 2017, and says it is the only hotel in that magazine’s history to take the title twice running. The villa count is unsettled: its own villas page says 31 villas and estates, the same page’s description says 28, and Forbes counted 33 in 2019.
What distinguishes it
The foundation is older than the owners The Sumba Foundation dates its malaria programme to 2004, its first health clinic to 2005 and its school lunch programme to 2008 — all of them before the 2012 change of ownership. A Malaria Training Centre follows in 2010, a health and hygiene course in 2012, a first English class in November 2017 and a Learning Development Centre in June 2019. The house reports 80 wells drilled or hand dug over twenty years and more than 300 water stations.
A 93 per cent fall in malaria is the figure the house stands on The foundation’s own number is a drop of 93 per cent in what it calls its original core area and 70 per cent island-wide. Its stated coverage is 400 villages and about 40,000 people, with water now reaching more than 30,000 of them across 200 villages. Twelve primary schools take the lunch programme, which it says feeds over 2,600 students.
The purchase price is public and the opening date is not Forbes puts Burch’s total investment at $35 million, covering the acquisition, roughly 100 additional acres and the rebuild. Neither the house’s history page nor its philanthropy pages give the year Nihiwatu first took guests; the resort dates only the construction window, 1988 to 1994. A register that wants an opening date has to settle for that window.
Three published villa counts, none of them reconciled The villas page says 31 villas and estates; the description of that same page says 28; Forbes counted 33 in 2019. The property has been added to continuously since 2012, which explains part of the spread. The register records the figures separately rather than averaging them.
Sumba is an hour’s flight from Bali and then a drive to the south coast; the house is not near a town. The wave in front of it is the reason a good many guests come, and will mean nothing to those who do not surf. A guest who wants a resort that keeps local life at arm’s length will find instead a house that puts its clinics, wells and school lunches at the front of its own account of itself.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.