Bali Care / Bali Tourism Blog

In search of expansion beyond Bali as its initial market, Bali based holiday rental agency Private Leisure International (PLI) has started to expand its outreach toward the region by bringing villas in Phuket and Koh Samui into its portfolio. After two years it has recorded quite a significant success by gaining trusts from a handful owners of Phuket’s most luxurious holiday homes including those located in prestigious estates such as The Samsara, Ayara, and Laem Son.

To strengthen its market positioning in Phuket, the board of PLI invited the board of DwiBali to join their business trip to Phuket. Having the collaboration based on friendship, the trip was designed to combine leisure in addition to business objectives. “We are in leisure business so it makes sense to give ourselves chances to enjoy what we are offering,” said Wisna Wedhana, the Managing Partner of PLI.

The journey started from Penang, Malaysian tiny island which combines industry, European heritage, tropical beaches in a very nice package. Whilst both PLIs and DwiBalis agreed that Penang was not the right place for their business, they had all the reasons to agree that they were having a good time before hading up for a heart pumping action of F1 drivers in Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang.

Their program in Phuket was led by PLI’s Phuket representative Chatrudee Chookeaw, a young energetic holiday property veteran who joined PLI since the first time it entered Phuket. From the picturesque Baan Talaefun where they stayed, site inspections and meetings were planned, executed, and evaluated. In addition to courtesy meetings with owners and representatives of luxury villas which have so far been happy clients of PLI, the program was also directed to acquiring newcomers into portfolio, especially low to mid end ones to fill the needs of their prospective clients.

“It is a potential market and we are keen to start joining PLI to expand our own business portfolio”, said Denny Widhana, the Director of DwiBali in their evaluation discussion in Singapore. At the end both PLI and DwiBali were looking toward a closer cooperation to strengthen market positioning in Phuket.

In last of March 2009, we will find three big ceremonies for Balinese. First is Galungan, second is Nyepi and then Kuningan. Usually, Galungan and Kuningan will be celebrate every 6 month, where Kuningan will celebrate ten days after Galungan Day.

Little different with both ceremonies above, Nyepi Day or many people known as Silent Day will be celebrate once a year. But in this year, three ceremonies above will be celebrate in two weeks. Many peoples have enthusiastic to celebrate ceremonies in this year, but we will not find Ogoh-ogoh (giant puppet) on Pengerupukan day (day before Nyepi), it caused in this period Indonesia will hold election.

Happy Galungan, Kuningan, and Nyepi Day !

Photo by Ramayadi

As the peak season across Christmas and New Year holiday period, Bali fell into low season. Whist it is a normal cycle that starting mid of January Bali tourism enters the lowest business pace, this particular low season attracts significant worries of many tourism business players in Bali, especially related to the global financial crisis with the worst impact affect the main tourist originating countries.

There are many logics explaining the cycle actually. “Everybody have just got back home from a Christmas – New Year holidays, so it just does not make any sense to expect the to come now for another holiday,” a simple explanation threw by Gede, a car rental Bali driver who had rare chance to meet his little baby back home as his schedule was completely full from early December through mid of January.

Working for a holiday rental company focusing on up market private accommodation service, Gede was exclusively assigned to families spending their holiday in Seminyak villas. “A number of different clients, but back to back stay period has completely filled up my schedule,” he continued.

With regard to the slow business in the last few weeks Gede did not show any negative expression. “It’s time for me to enjoy my earning from the peak period and spend enough time for my family,” he said. He is quite confident that there is nothing for him to worry about as the holiday rental company has started filling up his schedule starting March onward. The mid season will start as soon as the rainy season ends.

Gede is one of thousands of tour drivers in Bali, a small nut in a huge vehicle of Bali tourism industry. But I guess we have to learn from his optimism. Bali has been seeing worse situation, all of which got through peacefully and ended up in an even stronger business.

Whilst holiday rental has just started its popularity within the last few years, just like the whole Bali tourism industry, holiday rental business has been seeing 2008 as the most successful year in the history. Regardless global financial crisis affecting the main feeding countries of Bali tourism such as USA and Europe, the holiday season at the closing of 2008 has been pleasingly lucrative. Villa rental agencies were busy looking for available villa for their desperate clients wanting to spend their holiday in Bali villas. Demands have been by far exceeded available supply.

As the peak holiday season expired and the last client depart, worries started to arose. A perfect combination of low season and impact of global financial crisis came as a potential threat. “We have to be very careful in controlling our spending as we have to ensure that we have enough to run our business during the slow period,” an owner of a prominent holiday rental agency in Bali said. “We have been seeing Bali tourism survived worse situation, so there is nothing to worry about. Just business as usual,” another one expressed a more optimistic opinion.

I personally have not that much of worries. With price ranging from $500 to over $3,000 per night, target market of villa rental is wealthy business owners and investors. Crisis may force them t reallocate their portfolio or even significantly cut capitalization of their assets, but it will not affect their lifestyle. If Bill Gates lost 5 billion dollars, will he sell his private jet and fly commercial flight instead? Definitely not. There are a lot of executives and professionals are loosing their job and therefore will no longer afford to spend a holiday, but those people are in $100 - $200 resort hotels’ market range.

Nevertheless, I carefully watch the situation in my own company. It is correct that we do not have many in-house clients in January and probably February as well. But those months are in low season anyway. However bookings for the coming months do not show any evidence of financial crisis. From income point of view, January 2009 has been a good month. I believe that other agents were experiencing similar situation.

Finally Mr. Mangku Pastika, Bali Governor, prevented pretension of PT Anantara that want to develop adrift restaurant at Buyan Lake, Bedugul. Mr. Pastika said if investor would like to buy Buyan, they
also should buy his head.

For your information, an investor named PT Anantara would like to develop any tourism spot at Buyan lake, such as adrift restaurant and adrift stage for art performance. Water at Buyan lake has getting contraction, and the investor will take benefit from that to develop some tourism spot. But some Balinese component believe that Buyan lake is one of sacred place that sacred to Balinese, and also from some research said Buyan Lake is fountain head. That’s why they prevent any exploration at Buyan Lake.

Buyan Lake is one of the biggest lake in Bali, surround by tropical forest make Buyan Lake is favorite place to have outbound activity such as trekking and camping.

We hope Bali Governor always consist to prevent any exploration at Buyan lake by investor that only take profit.

Let we keep holiness of our environment!