Adrian Zecha set an extremely high standard when he created the Amanpuri resort in Phuket 12 years ago. He followed that up with a string of luxurious boutique hotels - creations that are much envied and imitated in the travel industry.
But for the past two years, the high priest of hotel style has been forced to watch his progeny from the sidelines, as shareholders fought out a court battle for control of Aman's parent company.
The Singapore-based Aman was run during that period by United States property investor Colony Capital, while Zecha, after waiting a year in the vain hope of a resolution, opted to set up a new company, Maha Resorts.
Maha recently opened a 26-room resort, Mahakua, set in 2,025 hectares of ranchland in Mexico. Zecha also paid a few unofficial visits to the site of Aman's latest resort, Amanjena, in Morocco. 'I didn't want them to come out with a disaster,' Zecha says.
Now he is back at the Aman helm, thanks to an out-of-court settlement and a US$102 million (HK$794 million) deal struck in October that saw Hong Kong-listed investor Lee Hing Development take effective control of Aman.
Zecha, the low-profile Indonesian-born hotelier, who is also chairman of the GHM group which runs Chedi hotels, says he plans to merge Maha and Aman and develop more hotels under the Aman brand.
'The intention is to merge Aman and Maha because clearly I can't do two at the same time and because the Mahas were a continuation of Aman anyway,' he says.