Bali · 2014–today
Adrian Campbell's Bali holiday villas, run by the same local team since 2014
The least dramatic business Adrian Campbell owns is also the longest running: a set of Bali holiday villas that has not changed hands, or teams, in over a decade.
How it started
When Adrian Campbell sold Troppo Zone Puri Rama Resort in 2014, he kept a foot in Bali through a small portfolio of holiday villas. They are let to short-stay guests through Airbnb and similar platforms, and the same local team has looked after them from the first booking.
What a villa business actually is
A holiday villa looks like a passive asset and is not. Each one needs cleaning between every stay, a pool and garden kept up in a climate that grows things overnight, maintenance for the things that salt air and humidity break, a booking calendar across several platforms, guest communication at odd hours, and Indonesian tax and reporting. The owner who is not in the country depends completely on the people who are.
Through COVID
Bali's tourism economy stopped almost entirely in 2020 and 2021. Many foreign-owned villas were sold or abandoned. This portfolio kept trading, in part because its team was local, loyal and already in place, and because the owner was in the country and spoke the language. Adrian points to it as the quiet proof that long-term relationships with staff matter more than any management contract.
What it taught him about rental pools
Running holiday villas one at a time is hard work: separate cleaners, separate bookings, separate maintenance, separate tax. The design of Saraya Beach Resort, where 154 villas are run as a single hotel by one operator and owners are paid automatically from a central pool, is a direct response to a decade of doing it the hard way. The management discipline also fed into Australasia Marketing, which manages property and holiday rentals for others.
For Australians thinking about a villa
Owning a villa in Indonesia is possible and can work well, but the structure matters more than the view. Foreigners cannot hold freehold title, so a villa is owned through a long leasehold or through an Indonesian company with a building right. Read the plain-English Lombok guide for Australians and the glossary before you fall for a listing.