Leading Hong Kong group Mandarin Oriental is branding a new mixed use project in Bali. An initial offering of 30 private pool villas will be on the real estate market with the estate adjacent to the hotel. A planned opening of both the hotel and villas is expected in mid-2018.

Each of the villas offers a 15-meter pool and features ocean views. The project is located in Pandawa which is past Nusa Dua. One of the drivers of demand for the area is the new 18-hole Bukit Pandawa Golf Course .

As a hotel group Mandarin has a number of projects with hotel branded residences underway including The Residences at Mandarin Oriental Bangkok which is part of the upcoming ICONSIAM complex. Other upcoming developments are located in Abu Dhabi, Munich, Marbella and Boca Raton amongst others. There is little doubt that for luxury hospitality brands who want to push forward a strong development pipelines that taking on real estate components is clearly a key.

Back to Bali and the tourism market which is typically a broader player in the resort residences market has seen an optick in airport passenger arrivals in the first five month of 2016 according to data from Bali Discovery. It’s expected that over 4.6 million international arrivals will be registered for the year with a reminder that the key domestic market will push this total number of passenger arrivals towards the 12 million level by the end of the year.

Not surprisingly Australia remains the leader in foreign travelers with 23% of the market share year-to-date but China is closing the gap at 20% and is expected to surpass the legacy market in the near future. India is another source of business that is rapidly growing given improved airlift connections.

For real estate developers who are looking at hotel residences the traditional key transaction market has been domestic demand for condominium hotels, while larger million dollar villas continue to look for sales traction.