Not a Villa, But a Neighbourhood — the Tropical Kasbah Story

There’s a moment every traveler to Bali knows — that first morning you wake up somewhere new and, for just a second, you’re not sure if you’re a guest or if you’ve simply come home. That feeling is exactly what Tropical Kasbah was built to create. And it started, quite simply, with a question two people couldn’t stop asking each other.

Where It Began

Our story begins with two people — one born and raised on this island, the other a traveller who arrived, fell in love with Bali, and never left. Both of us shared the same restlessness: a love of travel, of discovering new places, and of connecting with people from all walks of life. Somewhere in that shared love — for Bali, for hospitality, for genuine human connection — one question kept coming back to us:

What if we could offer others the Bali we know and cherish?

In 2025, that question stopped being hypothetical. Tropical Kasbah opened its doors with our first two properties — one in Umalas, Kerobokan, and one in Mas Village, Ubud. We chose those two corners of the island deliberately, because they couldn’t be more different from each other. And that was the point.

Why “Neighbourhood,” Not “Villa”

Bali is not one place. It’s many. Every village, every valley, every stretch of rice field moves to its own rhythm and carries its own kind of magic. A single villa, however beautiful, can only ever show you one version of the island. So instead of building one more standalone property, we set out to build something closer to a collection of neighbourhoods — each rooted in a different pocket of Bali, each with its own character, and each still unmistakably part of the same family.

That’s how our four locations came to be:

Kintamani

for those who want privacy and something unforgettable: waking up to your own private sunrise above Mount Batur, away from everything and everyone else.

Ubud Central

steps from Ubud Palace, the art market, and the Sacred Monkey Forest, yet wonderfully calm. The heart of it all, without sacrificing your peace.

Ubud Surroundings

what our guests affectionately call our “forest collection.” A compound wrapped in garden and jungle, with direct access to a river and rice fields, in a traditional Balinese village.

Umalas

what our guests affectionately call our “forest collection.” A compound wrapped in garden and jungle, with direct access to a river and rice fields, in a traditional Balinese village.

Four locations. Four experiences. One philosophy: to share the Bali we love, one stay at a time

Built Without a Roadmap

We didn’t start this with a background in hospitality, and we won’t pretend otherwise. We started small, and we started honestly — learning as we went, guided mostly by instinct and by the people who believed in us before there was much reason to: our families, our friends, our earliest team members, and the first guests who walked through our doors and left with warm hearts. With each step, we grew — into Kintamani, into the heart of Ubud — and each new location became another reflection of the same belief: that the most meaningful stays are the ones that feel real, not staged.

What’s Next

We’re not standing still, but we’re not rushing either. Before we take the next step, we’re committed to standing firmly on this one — making sure every room, every villa, and every corner of every Tropical Kasbah property is exactly as it should be, and that our team, the people who bring this place to life every day, continues to be invested in and taken care of. Growth means very little if what you already have isn’t at its best. So for now: we focus, we deepen, we refine.

The next chapter is coming. We just want to make sure that when it arrives, you feel every bit of the care that went into getting there