How Sanctuary Villas Outperformed a Market Down 31% With PriceLabs

Executive Summary

Anders Olsson is a Swedish entrepreneur who has lived in Bali for five and a half years. Anders had never built anything before, then turned an idea from a beach into Sanctuary Villas, a boutique hotel of 11 private, fully managed villas on Jalan Bisma in central Ubud. The villas were sold to private owners.

Today Anders prices the villas with PriceLabs, and even changed the property management platform (PMS) so the two could connect. He reports that the Ubud market is down 31% on last year, while Sanctuary Villas is running slightly ahead of last year. Anders also feeds PriceLabs data into an owner portal through the PriceLabs MCP (beta) with Claude, and uses the same AI connection to check area comparables before new investments.

About Sanctuary Villas

Sanctuary Villas is a boutique hotel of 11 private villas, each with its own private pool, and five more are being built to reach 16. It sits on Jalan Bisma, about as central as Ubud gets, on a street beside the main commercial road with no through traffic. The result is a central address that stays peaceful.

The design pairs two Indonesian building types, the Joglo and the rarer Villa Minang, inspired by Minangkabau architecture and its curved roof, with Swedish minimalism. Villas have one to three bedrooms and are built and furnished with local artists and craftspeople, not mass-market furniture. Anders sold the villas to owners, and the hotel runs as fully managed private villas with 24/7 staff and no shared facilities.

“You can get so many beautiful things done here. People are so talented.”
– Anders Olsson

Challenges Before PriceLabs

Anders came to PriceLabs after a pricing setup that was costing bookings, in a market that was getting harder to read. The core challenges were:

• A pricing setup that cost bookings: After a move to a new PMS, setting prices inside it became unmanageable, and Sanctuary Villas began losing bookings.
• Staying ahead when the market falls: When a market falls, villas that move with it fall with it. Ubud is down 31% from last year, so the challenge is to stay ahead of the market, not slide down with it.
• Growing direct bookings next to OTA channels: Villas sell across platforms and OTAs, and Anders is working to convert more visitors on the direct website.

“Trying to set the prices in our PMS was such a mess, and we were losing so many bookings.”
– Anders Olsson

PriceLabs as a Solution

With pricing stuck inside the PMS, Anders looked for a pricing platform that could connect to it. Two options came up. PriceLabs won on its fee structure, which offered a percentage of bookings or a flat monthly fee per unit, and Anders switched the PMS so PriceLabs could connect.

Key features that made a difference:

• Market comparison, not just a price: PriceLabs shows how Sanctuary Villas performs against the Ubud market, so a result can be read in context. In a market that fell 31%, beating the market by a wide margin is the signal.

“What’s really interesting with PriceLabs is that I get these insights in how I’m performing compared to the market.”
– Anders Olsson

• An owner portal fed by PriceLabs data: Anders runs the beta of the PriceLabs MCP, which connects PriceLabs data to Claude. With it, Anders built a portal where villa owners see how their villa is performing, a forecast of how it will perform, and how it compares to the market.

“I’ve been running the beta for the MCP to connect PriceLabs with Claude. I built this owner portal for the people who own the villas, where they can see exactly how their villa is performing.”
– Anders Olsson

• AI for development planning: The same AI connection helps when Anders plans new projects. It pulls area comparables into the planning.

“I’ve been able to use the AI connection to get really good insight of the comparables in the area, which has been a different twist.”
– Anders Olsson

• Support and a product that keeps moving: Anders points to customer support and the steady release of new betas and functionality.

Results

The villas are holding up far better than a market that fell sharply, and recent months are running ahead of last year.

• Outperforming a market down 31%: Over the last 30 days, revenue is up 6.3% on the same period last year while the Ubud market is down 31%. Year to date, revenue is down 9% (about 22 points better than the market) and the villas average ~85% occupancy compared to ~45% for comparable nearby listings.
• Owners get their own view: The owner portal shows each villa owner their villa’s performance, a forecast, and a market comparison, built on PriceLabs data.
• Development planning with market data: Anders uses the AI connection to analyze area comparables when planning new projects.

“The Ubud market is down 31% compared to last year, and I am actually overperforming compared to last year. That’s quite fantastic.”
– Anders Olsson

“PriceLabs has been a really, really good tool to optimize my prices.”
– Anders Olsson

Looking Ahead

The boutique hotel is growing. Five more houses are going up next door, which will take Sanctuary Villas to 16 houses. Beyond Sanctuary Villas, Anders has also started an architecture firm that runs development projects for clients, alongside a large project of nine very big villas.

The pipeline includes a community and retreat center in Ubud with 41 villas and 15 apartment units, a co-living and co-working space of 37 units in Uluwatu, and a newly signed large project in Lombok.

What stands out for Anders is a platform that keeps evolving.

“What I enjoy about PriceLabs is how you keep evolving the product.”
– Anders Olsson