Horizen's yield projections rest on an assumption that is easy to state and harder to prove: that visitor demand around Kuta, Lombok is growing, and growing in a shape that supports villa occupancy. Rather than assert it, we published the underlying figures as three charts on the Why Lombok page.
This article is the first of two walking through what those charts actually say. All figures come from BPS NTB, Indonesia's Central Statistics Agency. Where the data qualifies a claim, I have said so.
1. Domestic arrivals grew 46% in a single year
Lombok Tengah — Central Lombok, the regency that contains Kuta — recorded 1,490,740 domestic visitor arrivals in 2024, against 1,019,617 in 2023. That is growth of 46.2% in twelve months.
The obvious objection is MotoGP. The Mandalika circuit sits in the same regency, and September 2024 produced 216,285 arrivals — up 145% on September 2023, and the single largest month in the series. One weekend can flatter a year.
So remove it. Excluding September entirely from both years, domestic arrivals still grew 36.8%. The race amplifies the trend; it does not create it.
- September 2024 alone: 216,285 arrivals — 14.5% of the year
- Full year excluding September: +36.8%
2. The shoulder season is filling in — but the year is more peaked, not less
For a villa, the number that matters is not the best month. It is the worst one. Annual yield is set largely by how much revenue the quiet months carry, so the useful question is whether the floor is rising.
It is. The weakest month of 2023 drew 57,796 arrivals; the weakest month of 2024 drew 77,025 — a floor 33% higher. Ten of the twelve months in 2024 came in above 2023's monthly average.
The fourth quarter is where the shift is clearest. Q4 arrivals went from 278,237 to 539,516, a 94% increase, lifting the Q4 monthly average from roughly 92,700 to 179,800. Month by month: October +41%, November +99%, December +177%.
One honest qualification. Although the floor rose, the peak rose faster — the best month grew 80% against the worst month's 33%. The gap between Central Lombok's busiest and quietest month widened from 2.1x in 2023 to 2.8x in 2024. Demand is up across the whole year, but 2024 was a more seasonal year than 2023, not a smoother one. For modelling purposes that means the annual total is the less informative number; the monthly distribution is what an occupancy assumption has to survive.
3. Europe is the fastest-growing source region
Foreign arrivals at Lombok International Airport reached 81,544 in 2024, up 41.6% year on year. The regional split:
- Asia Pacific — 52,918 arrivals, +36.9%. Still 64.9% of the total.
- Europe — 25,170 arrivals, +56.1%. Its share rose from 28.0% to 30.9%.
- Americas — 2,924 arrivals, +22.9%.
Europe is the fastest-growing region, and the growth is broad rather than concentrated: every one of the seven European markets in the data grew at least 46%. The United Kingdom reached 5,148 arrivals (+51%), Germany 4,317 (+46%), France 3,804 (+53%), the Netherlands 2,251 (+67%), Switzerland 1,356 (+84%), Spain 1,325 (+67%) and Italy 1,249 (+53%).
Two other movements are worth noting. China went from 2,292 arrivals to 6,111 — up 167%, and now the third-largest single market. Malaysia remains the largest source by a distance at 28,464 arrivals, though at 34.9% of the total its share is being diluted as the mix broadens. Singapore was the only market in the dataset to contract, easing 5% to 8,237.
This matters to us specifically because Horizen sells to European investors. The same region supplying our buyers is also the fastest-growing segment of the guest base their villas would host.
4. Demand is moving upmarket
The third chart uses a different dataset: guests at star-rated hotels across NTB province, comparing 2024 with 2025.
- Four-star — 471,090 → 561,326 guests (+19.2%)
- Five-star — 112,978 → 164,909 guests (+46.0%)
- Combined — 584,068 → 726,235 guests (+24.3%)
Five-star demand grew at roughly 2.4 times the four-star rate, lifting the five-star share of premium guests from 19.3% to 22.7%. The growth is not confined to the high season either: the strongest five-star months were April (+73%) and December (+70%).
The detail I find most persuasive is not the headline. It is that all twelve months of 2025 beat the corresponding month of 2024 — in both tiers, without exception. Twelve for twelve is harder to explain away than a strong quarter.
What this data does not show
Three caveats belong with these numbers.
The three charts are not directly comparable. They cover different geographies and different periods: domestic arrivals are for Lombok Tengah regency, foreign arrivals are airport entries at Lombok International, and the hotel figures span NTB province as a whole. The first two compare 2023 with 2024; the hotel data compares 2024 with 2025.
The foreign arrivals figure is a floor, not a total. It counts arrivals by nationality at Lombok International Airport. Visitors who reach the island by sea — the fast boats from Bali and the Gilis carry a meaningful share — are not in that 81,544.
Arrivals are not occupancy, and occupancy is not yield. Nightly rate, operating cost, and the quality of day-to-day management all sit between a rising visitor count and what an owner actually receives. Growth in demand is a necessary condition for the projections we publish. It is not a sufficient one.
Coming in Part 2
Part 1 covers the demand side. Part 2 turns to supply: what is being built around Kuta, where nightly rates sit today, and how visitor growth has to translate into occupancy for a 10–14% projected gross yield to hold.
Source: BPS NTB (Badan Pusat Statistik, Nusa Tenggara Barat) — tourist arrivals by regency, foreign tourist visits to Lombok International Airport by nationality, and guests at star-rated hotels. Charts are reproduced on the Why Lombok page. This article is general market analysis, not investment advice.
