balivillacareVilla Management in Ubud
Key takeaways
- Ubud and the Gianyar hinterland sits in Gianyar Regency, so the accommodation tax is administered by the Badan Pendapatan Daerah Kabupaten Gianyar.
- The local operating constraint here is a world heritage cultural landscape, and it changes the cost side rather than the fee.
- Wellness and retreat stays run to weeks, so the one-month accommodation tax exclusion is a live question here rather than trivia.
- Nothing on this page ranks or recommends a company. We are paid the same fixed amount per enquiry either way.
Ubud is the area on this site where guests stay longest, and that changes the cost side, the tax position and the kind of company you should be looking for.
How to read the numbers on this page. A figure with no marker is quoted from a primary source and linked at the foot of the page. reported means the company that charges it publishes no public rate card, so the range comes from trade reporting rather than from the charging party. modelled means it came out of the model set out on the methodology page, which you can disagree with line by line.
Which administration taxes the villa
This is the first thing that catches Ubud owners out: you are not in Badung. Gianyar Regency has its own revenue office, its own local regulation implementing the accommodation tax, and its own administrative habits. A management company whose book is concentrated on the west coast is filing for you in an office it visits rarely, and the failure mode is not fraud — it is a form nobody got round to. Ask them to name the office.
UU No. 1 Tahun 2022 Pasal 58 ayat (1) caps the accommodation tax at 10% and leaves each regency and city to set the rate in force by local regulation, so the ceiling is national and the collector is not. The tax stack in full.
A World Heritage cultural landscape
The subak irrigation landscape around Ubud is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as ref. 1194, covering five sites including the Pakerisan watershed in Gianyar Regency. That is not a line for a listing description. It is a planning reality that constrains what can be built and where, in a way that no coastal sub-market on this site is constrained. For an existing villa it is mostly good news about future supply; for anyone planning to build, it is a question to put to a lawyer before it is a question to put to an architect.
What that does to the cost side
| Cost driver | What it means here |
|---|---|
| Humidity and growth | Inland, wetter and greener. Grounds maintenance runs harder year-round, damp and mold are live issues rather than seasonal ones, and outdoor furniture has a shorter life than it does by the beach. |
| Lower changeover intensity | Long stays mean fewer cleans per unit of revenue. The cost side here is the most forgiving of the five areas on this site, which matters more than the rate differential suggests. |
| Access and transfer time | Narrow roads, ceremonies that legitimately close them, and a long transfer from the airport. It costs guests time, which lands as a ceiling on rate rather than as a line on a statement. |
Stay length, and the one-month line
Ubud is where the most useful line in Indonesia's accommodation tax law becomes practical rather than theoretical. The explanatory memorandum to Pasal 54 ayat (1) of UU No. 1 Tahun 2022 provides that a private residence let as accommodation for more than one month is not an object of the tax. A four-week yoga teacher training, a six-week writing retreat and a two-month remote-working stay are ordinary bookings here rather than curiosities, and the tax treatment of each is different from the treatment of four separate weeks. Whether it applies to a given arrangement depends on the substance of that arrangement and is a question for an Indonesian adviser — but it is a question genuinely worth paying someone to answer in Ubud, which is not true everywhere on this site.
On the modelled midpoint of USD 4,475 a month the accommodation tax line is USD 448; on a let running over a month it is nothing, and the modelled net moves from USD 1,441 to USD 1,601 before anything else in the arrangement changes. Several other things do change with it, and they are worked through on long-term letting against nightly.
The walk, on the modelled figures
For a three-bedroom villa with a private pool, the model puts gross booking revenue at USD 2,450 to USD 6,500 a month, with occupancy modelled at 45–68%. Both are modelled rather than measured.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| What the guest pays | USD 4,475 |
| Accommodation tax (PBJT)Charged on what the guest pays. Not applicable to a let of more than one month. | −USD 448 |
| Booking revenue | USD 4,028 |
| Platform commissionWeighted across the channel mix at 14.2%. | −USD 573 |
| Management commission20% of booking revenue — charged on the booking, not on what is left after the platform. | −USD 806 |
| Channel manager and payment processing | −USD 81 |
| Housekeeping, laundry and grounds | −USD 403 |
| Markup on services bought for youZero if the contract says these are rebilled at cost. | −USD 40 |
| Transfer from the managerWhat lands in your account. Everything below this line happens outside their statement. | USD 2,126 |
| Utilities, repairs and replacement | −USD 282 |
| Final income tax on the rent10% of the gross rent, not of the profit. | −USD 403 |
| Reaches the owner | USD 1,441 |
| Share of the guest’s money that does not | 68% |
Ubud's walk is the most forgiving on the cost side of the five areas here, and the reason is arithmetic rather than virtue: fewer changeovers per unit of revenue. A three-week guest generates one clean and one laundry cycle where three separate weeks generate three of each. That partly offsets a softer achieved rate, and it is why comparing Ubud with Seminyak on nightly rate alone gets the wrong answer.
Run the same villa loosely — services rebilled with a markup, the upper end of every band — and USD 666 reaches the owner instead of USD 1,441. That gap of USD 775 a month is wider than the spread between any two published rates in this market, and it turns on contract wording rather than on percentages. Which clauses.
Choosing a company here
A meaningfully different operational job from the coast, and a smaller field of companies who actually do it.
Fewer turnovers, far more relationship. The person who can sort out a three-week guest's wifi, find them a reliable driver and explain a ceremony blocking the road matters more here than the person who can flip a villa in four hours. Ask what their longest current booking is. If the answer is six nights, they run a coastal operation with an Ubud address.
The five questions worth asking are the same everywhere and none of them is about the rate. They are on the hub page.
The other areas
- Seminyak, Petitenget and Kerobokan — Badung Regency, competition from hotels
- Canggu, Berawa and Pererenan — Badung Regency, new supply
- Uluwatu, Bingin and Pecatu — Badung Regency, water and utilities on the bukit
- Sanur and Denpasar — Denpasar City, a special economic zone written into a government regulation
Questions about Ubud
Does a month-long retreat booking change my tax position?
The explanatory memorandum to Pasal 54 ayat (1) of UU No. 1 Tahun 2022 states that a private residence let as accommodation for more than one month is not an object of the accommodation tax on hotel services. Ubud is the area on this site where that most often becomes a live question. How it applies to your arrangement depends on the substance of the letting and is a question for an Indonesian adviser — but ask it properly rather than assuming either way, because the assumption is worth money in both directions.
Is a softer nightly rate here actually worse?
Not necessarily, and this is the most commonly mis-modelled thing about Ubud. Longer stays mean fewer changeovers, and changeovers are where the variable cost lives. Compare what reaches your account per month, not what a platform shows per night, and the gap between Ubud and the coast narrows considerably.
My villa is outside Ubud proper. Does that matter?
For tax, only in so far as it decides which regency you are in — check whether you are Gianyar or have crossed into Bangli or Badung, because owners get this wrong. For revenue, it matters a great deal: the Ubud name carries a long way in marketing and not very far in a guest's experience of a forty-minute scooter ride to dinner.
Should I market to retreat organisers directly?
It is the closest thing to a direct-booking channel that exists in this sub-market, and it is a relationship business rather than a listing business. It also sits outside what most management companies are set up to do, which is worth knowing before you pay a percentage on bookings you sourced.
Sources cited on this page
- Airbnb — Service fees (host service fee percentages)
- UU No. 1 Tahun 2022 (HKPD) — Pasal 54, Pasal 58
- PP No. 34 Tahun 2017 — income tax on land and building rental
- Perda Provinsi Bali No. 6 Tahun 2023 — foreign tourist levy
- Villa Management Bali — published pricing plans
- Balitecture — published villa management rate
- UNESCO World Heritage List ref. 1194 — Cultural Landscape of Bali Province
Every figure above was read from the source it is attributed to on 20 September 2026. How we check this.