About Bali Plus

Bali Plus

Bali Plus, published as Bali Plus Magazine, is an English-language travel and lifestyle magazine for Bali, based in Bali and established in 1996. It describes itself as a complimentary, pocket-size, quick-reference guide to the island, and it is considered by many the pioneer of tourist media in Bali. Distributed free to visitors through Bali's tourism establishments, it has for three decades helped travellers decide where to stay, eat, drink, shop, sightsee and celebrate on the island, and it now publishes across print, an e-magazine, a website, a mobile application called Bali Plus In Your Hand, and social video channels. Its editorial home is Bali itself — its listings have been associated with the Canggu and Berawa area on the island's south coast — and its pages mix practical visitor information with features on Balinese culture, ceremonies and community life.

Established in 1996: a pioneer of Bali tourist media

Bali Plus was established in 1996, at a time when Bali's tourism industry was expanding rapidly but visitors still relied on a small shelf of guidebooks and hotel brochures for information. The magazine's own positioning, repeated in directory listings, is that it received great acceptance and acclaim from both tourism establishments and travellers, and that it is considered by many the pioneer of tourist media in Bali. That pioneer claim rests on its format and model: a free, pocket-size magazine written in English for visitors, supported by the island's tourism businesses and picked up by travellers where they stayed, ate and played. Independent travel writing from the period confirms the ecosystem it belonged to: guides to Bali noted the range of free English-language publications available around Kuta, Seminyak and Ubud, and singled out Bali Plus as a useful pocket guide, with good advice and a calendar of main ceremonies.

The pocket-guide format

Format is central to Bali Plus's identity. A complimentary pocket-size, quick-reference guide is designed to be carried: small enough for a beach bag or a rental-car dashboard, organised for fast consultation rather than long reading, and free at the point of use because its costs are carried by the businesses that appear in and around its pages. The model depends on trust on both sides — establishments accept and display the magazine because travellers use it, and travellers use it because the information is current and local. Bali Plus's longevity suggests that this compact bargain worked on an island where the visitor economy reinvents itself constantly: restaurants open and close, beach clubs rise, spas multiply and ceremonies fill the calendar every month, so a quick-reference guide has to be remade continuously to stay useful.

What Bali Plus covers

The magazine's own website shows the breadth of its current coverage, which mirrors the structure of its print guide. Its sections include a newsletter of Bali news and features, a party agenda, hot deals from hotels, restaurants and spas, a "Don't Miss" selection of events and openings, and a Best of Bali library covering getting around the island, including car hire in the main tourist areas; Balinese culture, including dance and drama, art and artists, and explanations of the Balinese Saka calendar; and guides to places beyond the south, such as the beaches of Nusa Penida. Its listings pages cover family attractions in detail — water parks in Kuta, elephant parks near Ubud, children's playgrounds in Sanur, treetop adventure courses in Bedugul and golf academies — the kind of practical, address-and-telephone detail a visitor guide exists to provide. A Bali's Best awards strand recognises hotels, spas, restaurants and attractions on the island. News coverage ranges from airport announcements and new malls to ceremonies such as Nyepi, the Balinese day of silence, and the monthly rhythm of full and new moons in the Saka calendar.

Bali's ceremonies and culture in a visitor magazine

A distinctive part of Bali Plus's content is its attention to the island's living Hindu culture, which visitors encounter everywhere but often do not understand. Its Best of Bali material explains that dance and drama have historically played an important role in Balinese society, through which people learned the tales of their tradition, and describes the Balinese as a people with a natural capacity for artistry. It explains the Saka calendar that governs temple anniversaries and holy days, and its news pages mark observances such as Nyepi and Tilem, the new moon. For a free tourist magazine, carrying this material matters commercially as well as culturally: ceremonies determine traffic, closures and the island's daily texture, and a guide that explains them helps visitors behave appropriately as well as plan their days. Bali Plus's features on events such as Chinese New Year celebrations at Bali hotels show the same blend — the island's hospitality industry presenting its own fusion of cultures to an international audience.

From print to app, e-magazine and video

Bali Plus has repeatedly rebuilt itself for new platforms, and its own accounts present that as a deliberate strategy. With the launching of its mobile application, Bali Plus In Your Hand, the magazine said it had strengthened its position as a top media publication in Bali, with a strong reputation in both print and online presence. Its website carries an e-magazine edition alongside its news and listings, and its homepage invites readers to subscribe to its YouTube channel, where its videos are embedded across its pages. A digital note on the site states that Bali Plus has constantly upgraded its digital platforms and, with help from international marketing firms and its global network, promotes Bali through influential international forums. The through-line is consistent: the product was never only the paper magazine, but the visitor's reference point for Bali, in whatever format the visitor was using.

The Denpasar and south-coast base

The batch record for this directory places Bali Plus in Denpasar, Bali's capital and administrative centre, and the magazine's own listings have placed it on the island's developed south coast, in the Canggu-Berawa area that grew from surf village to one of Bali's busiest visitor districts. Either way, the magazine is a Bali product in a way that Jakarta-published titles are not: it is written where its subject is. Its news pages draw on Bali sources such as Antara's Denpasar reporting, and its listings follow the geography its readers inhabit — Kuta, Seminyak, Canggu, Ubud, Sanur, Nusa Dua, Jimbaran and beyond. That local embeddedness, renewed monthly for nearly thirty years, is the practical foundation of its pioneer reputation.

Longevity in a changing island economy

To publish a Bali visitor magazine continuously from 1996 is to have worked through the Asian financial crisis, the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings that devastated the island's tourism, the global financial crisis, volcanic eruptions and the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed the island to international visitors. The magazine's web presence through and after those years — its site was carrying current Bali news, event agendas and hotel features through 2024, 2025 and into 2026 — shows a publication that outlasted the shocks that ended many travel titles. Free tourist media live or die on the health of the industry they serve; Bali Plus's survival across three decades of the island's booms and crises is the strongest evidence for its own claim to be Bali's pioneering tourist medium.

Bali Plus in the Indonesian magazine landscape

Reference lists of magazines in Indonesia include Bali Plus Magazine among the country's local titles — a different shelf from the Jakarta licensed editions that dominate those lists. It is one of the relatively few Indonesian magazines published in English, one of the few based outside Java, and one of the few built entirely around a single destination. Where national magazines sell readers a country, Bali Plus sells its readers an island it also calls home: its ceremonies, its kitchens, its surf coast and its spa tables. Established in 1996 and still publishing across print, web, e-magazine and app formats, it stands as Bali's longest-running visitor magazine and a fixture of the island's tourism infrastructure — the pocket guide that generations of travellers have picked up on arrival and carried around the island.