UU 18/2025 and Bali Villa Owners: Your Obligations Line by Line
UU 18/2025 is the Third Amendment to Indonesia's Tourism Law, in force since 29 October 2025. It rewrote the obligations of tourism businesses, deleted the law's sanctions chapters, and created a national tourism data system. Here is what it means for a Bali villa owner in practice — and, just as importantly, what it does not change about NIB, PBG and Bali's own regional rules.
UU 18/2025 and Bali Villa Owners: Your Obligations Line by Line
UU 18/2025 is the Third Amendment to Indonesia's Tourism Law (Law No. 10 of 2009), signed on 28 October 2025 and in force from 29 October 2025. For a Bali villa owner it does three things that matter: it rewrites the list of obligations every tourism business carries, it deletes the Tourism Law's own administrative-sanction and criminal chapters, and it mandates a national integrated tourism data system that will eventually see your property, your licence and your guest numbers sitting in one government database.
What it does not do is change a single line of the rules you actually get inspected against. That distinction is the whole point of this article, and it is the one most of the coverage published since October has got wrong.
What UU 18/2025 actually is
Indonesia's tourism framework has sat on Law No. 10 of 2009 for over fifteen years. UU 18/2025 is an amending law: it inserts, edits and deletes articles inside UU 10/2009 rather than replacing it. Anything the amendment did not touch is still live, which is why reading the amendment on its own gives you a distorted picture.
The headline concept the amendment introduces is the Ekosistem Kepariwisataan, or tourism ecosystem. Tourism development at national, provincial and regency level must now be planned around an ecosystem of interlocking elements — strengthening the tourism industry, culture-based tourism, digital integration, sustainable destination management and human-resource development among them — and grounded in research and data rather than ad-hoc project approval. The full text is published by the Indonesian government at peraturan.bpk.go.id.
For a single villa this is background, not a task list. But it explains the direction of travel: less discretion at regency level, more standardisation, and more data flowing upward.
The obligations, line by line
Article 26 of the amended law sets out what every pengusaha pariwisata — tourism business operator — must do. A villa rented to guests is a tourism business, whether it is one bedroom or eight. Here is the practical reading of each obligation as it applies to a villa.
| Obligation under the amended Article 26 | What it means for a villa owner | New in UU 18/2025? |
|---|---|---|
| Hold a valid business licence (Perizinan Berusaha) from central or regional government | Your NIB with the correct KBLI classification, plus any regional permit your regency requires. This is the obligation with real teeth. | No — carried over |
| Provide comfort, security and safety to guests | Working locks, functioning fire safety, pool safety, a named contact reachable 24/7, honest listing descriptions. | No — carried over |
| Carry insurance for high-risk activities | Applies if you offer surf lessons, boat transfers, cliff-edge facilities or similar. Standard villa liability cover is a sensible floor regardless. | No — carried over |
| Maintain a healthy, clean and pleasant environment | Waste separation and lawful disposal, wastewater handling, noise discipline. Increasingly enforced at banjar level in Bali. | No — carried over |
| Preserve the natural and cultural environment | Respect for temple setbacks, ceremonial access, coastal and river boundaries. | No — carried over |
| Provide non-discriminatory service | No refusal on grounds of nationality, religion, disability or similar. | No — carried over |
| Implement local empowerment initiatives, including community-based programmes | Local hiring, sourcing from local suppliers, contribution to banjar activity. Previously good practice; now an express statutory duty. | Yes |
| Participate in the integrated national tourism data system | Expect structured reporting of business and occupancy data once implementing rules land. | Yes |
| Use certified Indonesian guides for guided activity | Relevant if you package tours or experiences. Foreign guides only alongside a certified Indonesian guide. | Yes |
Pro Tip: The local empowerment obligation is the one owners underestimate. It is vaguely drafted, which means it will be interpreted locally — and in Bali, "locally" means your banjar. Document what you already do: staff on payroll, laundry and produce sourced in the village, contributions to ceremonies. A one-page record costs you nothing and is the difference between a conversation and a problem.
The sanctions chapters are gone. That is not good news.
The most consequential structural change in UU 18/2025 is a deletion. The amendment removes Chapter XIV of UU 10/2009, which contained the administrative sanctions, and Chapter XV, which contained the criminal provisions. The prohibitions section of Chapter VII went with them.
Read carelessly, that looks like deregulation. It is not. It is consolidation, and it reflects the same ultimum remedium logic that ran through the Job Creation Law: sectoral statutes stop carrying their own parallel penalty regimes, and enforcement moves to the licensing system instead. The obligation in Article 26 to hold a valid business licence survived the cut untouched. What changed is the route by which somebody comes after you for breaching it.
In practice, that route is now shorter and more automated than the one that was deleted. Licence status is visible in OSS. Regency-level enforcement in Badung and Gianyar runs off zoning and building compliance, not the Tourism Law. And the enforcement mechanism that has actually removed Bali villas from the market over the past year is platform verification — the Ministry of Tourism's programme requiring properties listed on Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia to show a valid NIB and matching KBLI, with named non-compliant operators delisted. None of that machinery depended on Chapter XIV.
If you want the detail on the licensing side, we cover it in our guide to NIB and TDUP licensing for Bali villas and in the 2026 villa rental licence guide for investors.
Satu Data Pariwisata: the reporting layer nobody has priced in
Article 17K of the amended law requires government and industry to use information and communications technology in tourism, expressly including the availability and distribution of integrated tourism data under a single national tourism data framework. The categories named cover destinations, strategic areas, activity types, tourism businesses, human resources, visitor statistics and tourist behaviour.
Translated: a national register in which your villa is a row. Licence status, classification, capacity, and in time occupancy and guest origin.
Two consequences follow for owners. First, discrepancies become visible. A villa licensed as a nine-room pondok wisata but listed as a fourteen-guest villa is currently a discrepancy nobody cross-checks; in an integrated system it is a flag. Second, tax exposure changes character. Reported occupancy data and local accommodation tax filings will be sitting in adjacent systems. Our Bali villa rental tax guide covers what should already be filed.
Pro Tip: Reconcile your paperwork with your listings before the data system does it for you. Pull your NIB, your KBLI code, your building permit and your live OTA listings side by side and check that bedroom count, guest capacity and business activity match across all four. In our experience roughly half of owner-managed villas have at least one mismatch, and almost all of them are fixable quietly today.
Guides, experiences and the levy
Two further changes are worth flagging for owners who do more than hand over keys.
Guided activity. Destination managers must use certified Indonesian guides, certified guides must work with local guides, and foreign guides may only operate accompanied by a certified Indonesian guide. If your villa packages temple tours, trekking or cultural experiences, the guide you use now has a certification requirement attached.
Foreign tourist levy. UU 18/2025 establishes a national legal basis for collecting a levy from foreign tourists, earmarked for tourism development and destination sustainability. It does not set the rate, the collection mechanism or the allocation — those go to a Government Regulation that had not been issued at the time of writing. Bali's existing provincial tourist levy continues under its own regional instrument. The honest position is that a national collection duty is coming and its shape is unknown; treat anyone quoting you a national figure today with suspicion.
The amendment also widens access to tourism financing to medium enterprises and cooperatives, and restates that fiscal and non-fiscal incentives are available to tourism businesses — without, as in previous versions, specifying eligibility criteria or procedure.
What UU 18/2025 does not change
This is the section to read twice. The rules that determine whether your villa can legally operate in Bali next month are almost entirely outside this law.
| Requirement | Where it actually comes from | Touched by UU 18/2025? |
|---|---|---|
| NIB and KBLI classification | OSS business licensing system | No |
| PBG building approval and zoning conformity | Building and spatial planning regulation, regency level | No |
| Restrictions on foreign and nominee ownership | Agrarian law and Bali provincial regulation | No |
| OTA listing verification and delisting | Ministry of Tourism programme with platforms | No |
| Local accommodation tax and income tax | Regional tax regulations and national tax law | No |
| Bali's provincial tourist levy | Bali provincial regulation | No |
Bali's own regional instruments have been moving considerably faster than national law. If nominee structures are relevant to you, start with our breakdown of Perda 4/2026 and nominee ownership, and with what the NIB requirement means for villa rentals in 2026.
Key takeaways
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| What is UU 18/2025? | Third Amendment to Indonesia's Tourism Law, in force 29 October 2025 |
| Does it replace Bali villa licensing? | No. Licensing sits in OSS and regional regulation, untouched |
| Biggest structural change | Deletion of the law's own administrative and criminal sanction chapters |
| Does that reduce your risk? | No. Enforcement moved to licensing, zoning and platform verification |
| Genuinely new duties | Local empowerment programmes, national data participation, certified guides |
| Foreign tourist levy | Legal basis created; rate and mechanism pending a Government Regulation |
| What to do this quarter | Reconcile NIB, KBLI, PBG and listing details; document local hiring and sourcing |
What I've seen since the law came into force
The week UU 18/2025 was published, three owners forwarded me the same WhatsApp summary claiming Bali villa rules had been "scrapped" because the penalty chapters were gone. One of them had been putting off an NIB correction for months and took it as permission to keep putting it off.
That is exactly backwards, and the months since have proved it. Not one of our managed villas has had a Tourism Law sanction raised against it — because nobody was ever enforcing villas through the Tourism Law. What has actually caused problems is mundane: a KBLI code that no longer matched the building's use after a renovation, a listing advertising capacity above what the permit allowed, and in one case a villa whose licence sat under a previous owner's entity after a sale.
The pattern I would draw from this amendment is not about penalties at all. It is that Indonesia is building the infrastructure to see the villa market properly for the first time. Owners who have been comfortable in the gap between what is on paper and what is on Airbnb should use the window before the data system closes it. The fixes are cheap now and expensive later.
The other thing I would say plainly: the local empowerment clause is not window dressing in Bali. Villas that already employ locally and contribute to the banjar have a completely different relationship with their neighbourhood than villas run remotely with imported staff. That difference has always mattered here. It now has a statutory hook to hang on.
— Francesco, Manta Villas
How Manta Villas handles compliance for owners
We manage villas across Canggu, Berawa, Pererenan, Seminyak, Ubud and Uluwatu, and compliance is not a bolt-on service — it is a condition of taking a property on. Before a villa goes live under our management we reconcile the NIB, KBLI classification, building approval and listing details against each other, fix what does not match, and set up the tax and reporting cadence the property needs. After that, regulatory changes like UU 18/2025 land on our desk instead of yours.
If you own a villa in Bali and are not certain your paperwork would survive an integrated national database, that is the review worth doing this quarter. See how Manta Villas villa management works, or send us the property details and we will tell you honestly what we find.
FAQ
When did UU 18/2025 come into force?
UU 18/2025 was signed in Jakarta on 28 October 2025 and took effect on 29 October 2025. It is the Third Amendment to Law No. 10 of 2009 on Tourism, so it edits that law rather than replacing it. Provisions of UU 10/2009 that UU 18/2025 did not touch remain in force unchanged.
Does UU 18/2025 replace Bali's villa licensing rules?
No. UU 18/2025 is national framework legislation. It does not amend the licensing rules that actually govern a Bali villa day to day, which come from the OSS business licensing system, building and zoning regulation, and Bali's own provincial and regency regulations. Your NIB, KBLI classification and building permit obligations are unchanged by this law.
Do I still need an NIB if UU 18/2025 removed the sanctions chapters?
Yes. Article 26 of the amended law still obliges every tourism business to hold a valid business licence from central or regional government. Deleting the Tourism Law's own sanctions chapters removed one enforcement route, not the underlying obligation. Enforcement now runs through the OSS licensing regime, regional regulations and platform-level verification, all of which are active. You can check your own licence status directly in the OSS system.
What new obligations does UU 18/2025 create for villa owners?
Three practical ones. First, an explicit duty to run local empowerment and community programmes alongside the existing non-discrimination duty. Second, participation in the national integrated tourism data system, which will collect business and visitor data. Third, for owners who arrange tours or experiences, a requirement to use certified Indonesian guides, with foreign guides only permitted when accompanied by a certified Indonesian guide.
Does UU 18/2025 introduce a foreign tourist levy in Bali?
It creates the national legal basis for one, but it does not set a rate or a collection mechanism. Those details are left to a forthcoming Government Regulation. Bali's existing provincial levy for foreign tourists continues to operate under its own regional instrument in the meantime. Villa owners should expect a collection obligation to be clarified rather than assume nothing will change. Ministry announcements are published by the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism, and a useful independent reading of the amendment was published by Seven Stones Indonesia.
Recommended reading
- Bali Villa NIB and TDUP Licensing: What You Actually Need
- Villa Rental Licence in Bali: 2026 Guide for Investors
- Perda 4/2026 and Nominee Ownership in Bali
- Bali Villa Rental Tax: The Owner's Guide