The story of Jungle Hill House
30th April 2024
Jungle Hill House is a stylish, contemporary villa on a hilltop overlooking jungle that reaches down towards the beaches of Sri Lanka’s South Coast near Galle.
Sri Lanka has a rich history of modernist architecture, Geoffrey Bawa pioneering the Tropical Modern style, and this house nods to that more functional approach with a clean simple design that seems to celebrate more the lush green surroundings than anything too ostentatious in its own construction.
Sitting out on the pool deck, elevated and amongst the tree-tops, it’s quickly clear how well that works.
The owners, originally from Australia, conceived and designed the house after several family visits to Sri Lanka and, after much searching, acquired the bare land on which it sits in 2014.
“Bare land” might be a misnomer given the lush jungle that covered it and, largely, still does. The process to visualise, plan, clear where needed and landscape took nearly a year - a lot of work needing to be done to make the top section buildable.
With that done, the building work began in early 2015 with construction taking over 18 months to complete. Any build project brings challenges but with jungle, huge boulders to remove, and a significant slope to landscape, this one was fairly unique. Navigating those challenges, and after considerable effort, the house was completed by the end of 2016.
Income
The villa was beautiful and a marked contrast to many of the villa rental options nearby - most, either as renovations or new-builds, leaning more to classical Dutch or Sri Lankan village styles.
It proved a popular look and with occupancy very quickly up around 70%, rental incomes in 2017 and 2018 - alongside the use the owners made of the house too - seemed to comfortably justify the investment, time and effort. In December 2018, the Villa was featured in UK Vogue under “9 Luxury AirBnBs for the perfect winter getaway” - the only Villa featured in the article from Sri Lanka.
2019, of course, brought its own challenges although numbers remained relatively strong. 2020 and Covid, though, inevitably saw occupancy drop massively across the whole country, and it wasn’t really until mid-2022 that Sri Lanka - and the house - was seeing a good consistent flow of paying guests again.
Now into 2024 and occupancy is back up to over 60% across the year. The owners have not pushed rates up significantly from when they first offered the house to guests, partly a function of there being more options now, but good occupancy and an average nightly rate around USD 350 per night is providing a sound base of income and a decent return on money spent.
Costs and operation
The operation for the villa is quite stream-lined. Visitors book on a bed and breakfast basis but can arrange other meals, for additional cost, when at the property. They can choose between Sri Lankan food, cooked by one of the small team, or the house staff can arrange for a visiting chef to come and prepare different styles.
The Villa has employed a cost-effective model of both permanent and part-time staff. The permanent team of two easily covers all housekeeping, pool maintenance and cooking, while a team of gardeners, maintenance and other specialists visit the property on a regular scheduled basis.
The fixed overheads for the villa, then, are not huge - the annual salary (and casual staff) expense likely between 15 and 20 percent of total booking income. Maintenance and other operating costs throughout the year vary, but are generally low given the largely concrete construction and regular scheduled maintenance.
Opportunity
Jungle Hill House has taken a huge amount of time, effort and a significant sum of money both in initial conception and in reinvigorating advertising and promotions of it as a guest house after Covid.
The owners have loved time spent there, as have their guests given their longstanding Superhost status on AirBnB, but with a young family now, and moving from London back to Australia they don’t feel able to spend the amount of time there it deserves or, on occasion, needs.
With guest numbers well recovered and the house in very good condition it will provide not only a great tropical escape but, for the right buyers, a sound long-term investment.