The View From the Beach

Simona - Living RoomView Wide, originally uploaded by bhmvillas.

Today is the open house for the launch of the new Simona Oasis & Spa. There are a lot of nice villas on the island, but let me tell you, this place is something else. Built on an island in a rive in Canggu, the place is palatial and absolutely top of the line. A full spa facility is provide for guests, and a wide variety of other amenities. Each bedroom is equipped with stunning baths, iPod docs, LCD TVs and DVD players.

One of the keys to this place, though, is the staff. The property has an experienced and very senior staff with a full time manager and an excellent chef.

With top facilities, excellent service standards and a drop dead setting — Simona Oasis & Spa will be a favorite with the high end crowd and event planners.

The property is marketed by BHM.

Indah Manis Living Room, originally uploaded by bhmvillas.

Villa Indah Manis has a new website as of today. Visit them online to learn more about the villa or to book direct at www.Villa-IndahManis.com.

The villa itself is remarkable — 6 bedrooms, a gym, a spa, a media room, a guest office, two pools and a professional staff with full time manager and chef. Located in Pecatu Hills, the property has views out to the coast and up towards the mainland where you can see the volcanos in the distance.

Located within Indah Manis is the honeymoon suite Bulan Madu — a villa-within-a-villa. Completely private with its own pool, Bulan Madu is a great romantic escape. Check it out — it’s a great example of the “destination villa” comcept.

This villa is managed and marketed by BHM.

The Elite Havens Group, one of Bali’s best known brand names, has opened a new sales office in the fashionable Oberoi district. The move comes on the heels of the group opening a new dedicated sales website and signals what appears to be a more aggressive market stance from the luxury market leader.

“We’ve had a great year, but our operation has always suffered a bit from a low profile office,” states Matthew Georgeson, head of Sales at Elite Havens. “We’re more visible in this area and expect both a boost to our brand recognition and to our walk-in traffic.”

The new office, sporting a colonial style and a wide veranda, is located on the same street as competitors Paradise Property, Exotiq, C151, and virtually next door to new-comer Royalty Property. “We’re known as a luxury brand. In line with that the Oberoi office is the largest and most prestigious in the area. We’ve made a real effort to distance ourselves from the competition,” noted Georgeson.

Visit them in Oberoi at 18c Jalan Laksmana or online at www.EliteHavensSales.com

The long dormant Villa Forum website has been at last re-born: now as a luxury villa directory. The site provides a free listing service for owners or management companies who want to publicize their villas. No registration, no fees.

The domain has been around for a while and is indexed everywhere, so that means a listing there will give you another relevant in-bound link for your website, which should also give your search engine rankings a bit of a tweak. Pretty straightforward and easy way to give your marketing a boost.

Try it out at http://www.VillaForum.com

The last several years have witnessed a significant increase in development, particularly relating to vacation villa housing. The trend continues and indeed is strengthening. Some commentators have speculated that there are as many as 40 multi-unit villa developments on the books which will add hundreds of bedrooms to the inventory on the market. Now add to that number, probably by a factor of 2x or 3x, the stand-alone villas under construction and you start to get a good idea of the feeding frenzy we’re seeing at this moment.

When is enough? How much is too much? People are starting to ask these questions, but I have to wonder whether the are even the right questions…

Initially let’s take a crack at the validity of the numbers. While the property marketeers are out there flogging at least 40 developments, the reality of the situation sees perhaps only 2 dozen viable projects. Of those two dozen, only a portion actually have spades in the dirt. The development game loves to sell off the plan, when at all possible. That invariably means some plans never materialize due to changing market conditions, lack of interest, etc. The point being: Don’t let the commercial multi-unit developments number fool you. We’re not anywhere near the lunacy one observes in places like Phuket.

Next, let’s factor out the hotels who have jumped on the villa bandwagon and are constructing villa-type accommodations under their hotel brands. These units just don’t come into this analysis — these are hotels, people! The hotel market is a thing unto itself with market characteristics that are distinct from the villa business. (Arguably some of the multi-unit complexes passing themselves off as villas are hotels, too, but that is a topic for another post!)

On the subject of the individual villas under construction, one must keep in mind that this is not a coherent market. Individual villa construction is driven by private owners who exhibit a wide range of motivations, from pure investment to pure whimsy. Generalizing about the individual villa market is fraught with peril. About the best one can safely say is that some of these villas will enter the commercial market — and that’s a slim reed from which to hang any meaningful trend analysis. Their impact on the market long-term, in other words, is extremely hard to predict.

The potential for over-development is a threat primarily in two key areas: burden on infrastructure and the environment, and impact on the market. In the next couple of posts I will take a look at both these topics.

Stay tuned…