Is space and nature the new luxury?

What do you do when you travel frequently with family and friends and you can never quite find the resort of your dreams?

Well, in Andrew Dixon’s case, you build your own.

Actually, he went a step further – he built a private island of his own.

Said Dixon, a former banker, “It was either marble foyer and chandeliers or a shack on the beach and I was looking for somewhere we’d like to visit with family and friends.”

Then a few years ago, he visited a private island called Pangkil, off Bintan, where a friend had built six houses. “That was pretty unique.”

That sparked the idea. Why not lease a private island and build a few houses for family and friends?

And so Dixon found Nikoi, a 15 hectare island 8km off the east coast of Bintan, put a group of five friends together, bought the leasehold title to the island and built a few houses for themselves.

“When I did the numbers, however, it made sense to run it fulltime and so we made it into a place where other people could come,” he said.

Two years later, Nikoi has gained a reputation as a stealth hideaway for people in the know from Singapore and afar. There are 15 houses with a total of 21 rooms and through pure word of mouth, they have been filling up steadily.

Nikoi Island luxury

In the last six months, Dixon said they’ve achieved 95% occupancy. The price works out to about S$330 per person, per room – the price includes activities such as kayaking, windsurfing, sailing and snorkelling.

Meals cost an extra $80 per person per day while transfers cost $70 per person. Children get 50% off board and transfers.

“We get a different mix of guests – families, groups, honeymooners – and not just people from Singapore but people who have heard of us from Europe, US and Australia,” he said.

The average length of stay is three nights and there’s a total of 40 staff to look after guests.

The marketing message helps – stay on your own private island.

“We don’t use the words, retreat, resort or ecotourism – it’s really like visiting a friend’s private island. There are no signs, it’s a casual place and nothing’s in your face,” he added.

The fact that he and his friends had no hotel background probably helped. “We just decided to start it and fix things along the way. We try and do things differently and not being a hotelier, that’s easy to do.

We have learnt a lot,” he smiled.

“We underestimated the logistics of operating on a remote island. Every piece of material, food item has to be brought in by boat. We also underestimated the demand – we were surprised that there were so many people like us looking for different places to stay.”

As an investment, it may not be the easy money most bankers are used to but given what’s happened in the Global Financial Crisis, running a private island is as good as any business, if not better because with this, Dixon says he is finding satisfaction in seeing delight in customers’ faces – possibly more than he derived from looking at numbers on a spreadsheet.

“We’re still building, still putting in money but we are almost there,” he said.

Inspired by Nikoi and what they’ve achieved, Dixon and his partners have bought a leasehold to another island called Bawah and is now finalising a concept.

“There is a real opportunity to do something high end, eco friendly with best environmental and community practices. I am pleasantly surprised by how people welcome the idea of no air-conditioning in the room at Nikoi, for example.

“I think people want back to basics and simplicity where luxury is not the marble in the bathroom but the space, nature and environment and where the food and service is honest.

“To me that’s a luxury.”

Note: To get to Nikoi, take a ferry to Bintan Resorts, then it’s an hour’s drive to the east coast and a half-hour boat ride to the island.

For more information visit http://www.nikoi.com

Photo courtesy of Nikoi Island

Thanks to The Transit Cafe for the story