Bali after the boom — record arrivals, tighter rules, and a plan to finish what was started

Alex Shtefan, founder of Alex Villas, on the state of the Bali market and of the company. Recorded in August 2026.

Bali welcomed more international visitors in 2025 than in any year on record. Its property developers, meanwhile, have been living through the hardest stretch in the island's modern history. These are not two separate stories but one — and together they explain most of what has happened to the companies building here, including Alex Villas Group.

A record year for the island

According to the Bali Hotel & Branded Residences 2026 report by Horwath HTL and C9 Hotelworks (March 2026), international arrivals in 2025 set a new record, exceeding the pre-pandemic peak of 2019. Island-wide hotel occupancy held at 74% — softer than the rebound years, still strong by any historical measure. The tracked hotel pipeline stands at 5,641 rooms and grew only marginally over the year, so new supply is not running away from demand.

Demand is spread rather than concentrated: Asia outside ASEAN and Oceania each account for roughly 28% of international arrivals, Europe for 27%. The report's own verdict on 2025 is that the market moved "from recovery to resilience". Bali remains Indonesia's primary tourism engine, with no domestic destination near its scale or connectivity.

What changed in 2024

The turbulence did not come from tourism. From 2024 the permitting process tightened across the industry: building approvals (PBG) and the certificate of occupancy (SLF) became slower and more demanding for every developer on the island. Government oversight increased on all fronts, with inspections running across the market, including developers' subsidiaries. Several high-profile cases followed — demolitions, and moratoriums in individual districts. Sales fell several times over, market-wide. Any broker or agent who worked on Bali through that period will confirm the picture.

The rules tighten again in 2026

By 2026 the direction of policy became explicit. The provincial government now requires every short-term rental to demonstrate full legal compliance by 31 March 2026; listings that cannot verify their business registration through the national digital framework face removal from booking platforms. Individual foreign buyers can no longer hold the required tourism operating licences directly — the licence has to sit inside an Indonesian corporate structure.

Roughly 84% of the developments on sale in Bali consist of fewer than thirty villas. A market long dominated by small, informal operators is being asked, for the first time, to become professional. For companies that formalised early — with Indonesian legal entities, their own management operation and a compliance record — the new rules are less a threat than a sorting mechanism.

How off-plan money actually works

One part of the founder's address deserves close attention, because it is arithmetic that is almost never explained in public.

Money in a development project sits in land, design, permitting documentation, infrastructure and completed stages of construction. On the group's Complex 7, that means the pile field, retaining walls, foundation slabs, the monolith of the first floors of several blocks and the engineering networks. As with any developer anywhere, the price of a unit carries more than the construction cost — it includes the work of the team, sales and marketing. That is how a developer's cost base is built.

The second half of the arithmetic is timing. Off-plan money does not arrive at once — it arrives in instalments, on the schedule written into each contract, as each stage falls due.

What Alex Villas Group has built

The company did not begin as a developer. It began in 2014 with villa management — the founder met the first guests himself — and built its early reputation on hospitality: a Superhost track record on Airbnb with thousands of guest reviews, and guests checking in daily to this day.

The first buyers were friends and acquaintances, and the founder put his own money into the projects alongside them. Later, guests who had stayed in the villas and watched how the company worked became owners themselves. Then came the complexes — one through six, plus a series of individual projects. More than 150 units have been handed over to clients, and more than 200 units operate under the group's own management company.

Production the group owns

Most developers on Bali buy concrete, steel and furniture on the open market and wait in a supplier's queue. Alex Villas Group built the supply side into the company.

AV Concrete — the group's own batching plant. Concrete arrives on site to the group's schedule and specification.

AV Steel — metal structures fabricated in-house, removing one of the longest lead times in Bali construction.

AV Furniture — a workshop that fits out completed units to a single standard, without months-long import waits for replacements.

All of it grew organically. Over more than a decade the group has financed itself from its own operations, without banks and without external funds. That is a slower way to build a development company, and a more exposed one — there is no third-party balance sheet to lean on when the market turns. It also means the structure that exists today was built, not bought.

Why the delays happened

The founder does not present the delays as purely external. The cause, he says, is complex: the market, the regulation — and management mistakes at particular stages. Those lessons have been taken into account and are being corrected. Management decisions of earlier periods are going through an audit and a legal review, and the company deliberately leaves their characterisation to lawyers rather than offering its own.

The decisions taken

• Costs were cut several times over, while the core team that knows how to build was kept.

• New retail sales of projects under construction were stopped deliberately — so as not to grow obligations. Completed villas and resale of finished units are unaffected and continue.

• The group's resources are concentrated on completing what has been sold, not on starting anything new.

"This period is probably the hardest of my entire life in business," Shtefan says in the address. "Every delay is not a line in a report — it is specific people and specific families."

A date the company will not name yet

Active works on the projects under construction are currently paused, for the two reasons the founder names directly: permitting and financing. The company's line on what happens next is stricter than the market habit. A new completion date will be announced only when it is backed by an issued permit and confirmed financing. Permit status for a specific complex or section is provided in writing, with application numbers, on request. Promises that are not backed by confirmed financing are not made at all.

An admission on communication

"This is our failure, and I want to apologise for the speed of our replies," the founder says. When the difficulties began, enquiries arrived from hundreds of people at once, while the team was already being reduced. Communication is being rebuilt: official statements have been sent, and anyone whose question remains unanswered is asked to duplicate it to the company's official address, where every message is registered.

What owners can do today

Asked what the company offers on each individual contract, the founder declines to improvise: there is no universal ready-made solution today, and he is not going to invent one on camera. Real solutions appear together with completion — which is exactly why raising capital for completion is his main work. When completion is secured, the company will come forward with a concrete proposal, officially and under a single set of transparent rules.

What is available now is a written request for the status of a specific property, registered and answered through the official channel. And one structural point that matters to every contract holder: Alex Villas has long operated as a group of companies, every agreement remains with the company that signed it, and its obligations do not depend on the composition of shareholders.

Who runs the company day to day

Over more than a decade the company has assembled a strong professional team — engineers, builders, hospitality and legal specialists, many of whom have been with the group for years. It is a team the company is proud of, and the product it hands over is held to a single high standard of quality, from structural work to interiors and furniture.

Operations, finance and service standards, construction, legal and permitting, and the daily running of every complex sit with managers based on the island. Contracts, permits and client documentation are handled in-house by licensed Indonesian lawyers. The founder's request concerning the team is specific: send questions to the official support channel, not to individual employees. "There is enormous pressure on the people who stayed, and they keep doing their work every day."

Recognition from outside

In 2024 the group's projects won three PropertyGuru Indonesia Property Awards, presented by KOHLER: Best Housing Development (Bali) for Complex 3 in Pererenan, Best Investment Residential Development and Best Residential Architectural Design.

In 2025 the group received a Top-30 Taxpayer Appreciation Certificate in Bali from the Indonesian Directorate General of Taxes. In a year when the market's central question is legal formalisation, recognition from the tax authority itself is a more meaningful credential than any marketing claim.

In December 2023 the group took part in the Indonesia Investment Roadshow in Dubai, alongside the Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to the UAE and the Director General for Immigration at the Ministry of Justice.

The search for strategic capital

The founder describes his own role now in narrow terms: negotiations on strategic capital, in several formats — from participation in individual projects to a partnership at the level of the group. Deals of this kind are not fast, and several conversations are at different stages. Names, amounts and stage will be disclosed only after binding documents are signed.

What the group brings to that table is tangible: land in locations with proven year-round demand, projects with completed construction stages and permitting documentation obtained or in process, its own construction division and material production, and an operating rental business run by its own management company.

Why Bali still makes sense

None of the company's difficulties change the underlying asset. Visitors keep arriving in record numbers, guests keep checking into the completed complexes and leaving good reviews, and the island keeps growing. A market that is being forced to formalise favours precisely the operators who built legal structures, production and management before the rules required it.

Judged by actions

The founder closes the address without a promise. "Evaluate us not by rumours on the internet, but by actions — by the work, by the concrete steps our whole team takes," he says. "The outcome of this story is not faith in one person. It is a working system: the team, the partners, the strategic capital."

Contact

If you have a contract with the company, write to the address specified in it — that channel does not change.

For any other question — care@alex.villas.

About this material

This article is informational. It is not an offer, not a proposal to acquire anything, and not a guarantee of any result. Market data is quoted from the Bali Hotel & Branded Residences 2026 report by Horwath HTL and C9 Hotelworks, March 2026. Quotations are from the founder's public video address of August 2026. Company figures are the group's own data. Alex Shtefan is the founder of Alex Villas and a shareholder of the group; he is not a director of PT Alex Villas Group.