Gili Islands – The New Jewel of Indonesia

The Gili Islands are relatively unknown to tourists and overseas property investors alike, but these three pieces of tropical paradise are starting to make a name for themselves.

Bali in Indonesia has long been a tourist favourite and has just been ranked number one in TripAdvisor’s 2017 Travellers’ Choice Awards. But with Bali now responsible for over half of the international visitors arriving in Indonesia every year, the island is now beginning to reach capacity.

Situated in the Lombok Straits, just 2 kilometres off the coast of Lombok are the Gili Islands.

These three islands, made up of Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air, are starting to attract tourists and overseas property investors alike looking for the original experience of Bali.

Getting to the Gili Islands once meant 8 hours of travelling via Lombok, but now there are high-speed ferries in operation capable of whisking visitors from Bali to the islands in just 90 minutes.

Once there, beautiful unspoilt beaches and traditional villages can be found to be used as a perfect base for scuba diving and water sports.

With much improved access, many more international visitors are flocking to the Gili Islands. Indeed data from the Lombok Ministry of Tourism show that visits to the islands rose by almost 1,000 per cent between 2010 and 2015.

Construction of tourist accommodation properties is rapidly increasing on the three Gili Islands, with a further nine projects scheduled to add to the thousand plus registered tourist properties.

Traditionally the islands have been a seasonal destination, covering just four months of the year, but as popularity has increased so the season has stretched. Tourists are now visiting the Gili Islands from December through to August.

The average stay on the islands for visitors is three days, as tourists combine the destination with the better known Bali, but more and more travellers are now doing this and creating further demand for accommodation across the three Gili Islands.

This increasing accommodation demand has attracted investors from all over the globe, as confirmed by Morgan Girouard, President of Gili Developments, who offer property developments on the islands.

Mr Girouard said that buyers from Singapore, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, the UK and the USA have been showing interest in the properties available on the Gili Islands.

‘I know Mexicans, Italians, Chinese who own businesses on the islands. Literally, the Gilis draw people from everywhere,’ he said.

As Bali reaches stretching point, it seems that there could be a new Jewel of the Indian Ocean.