Wayan Jhon founded Bali Farm Cooking School in 2013 to solve a challenge facing small organic farmers. Local markets favored perfect-looking produce, while hotels and restaurants required consistent volume, neither of which his small farm could deliver. He responded by turning the farm itself into a traveler experience.
Key takeaways
Create your own market. Bali Farm Cooking School began in 2013 to connect small organic farmers with a more reliable market. It welcomed around 500 travelers in its first year and now welcomes 6,000 to 10,000 travelers annually. The team has grown from four people to 15.
Diversify your audience through GetYourGuide. Before partnering with GetYourGuide, more than half of guests came from Australia. Today, European and North American travelers are nearly equal to Australian guests.
Build trust before guests arrive. The team replies within five minutes and confirms dietary and transport details over chat. Once on the farm, guests are treated like a best friend or family member, earning a 5-star rating across nearly 2,000 reviews.
Streamline operations with better data. Dietary information shapes kitchen planning. The team prepares for dietary requests in advance, delivering a smoother guest experience.
Turn demand into new products. GetYourGuide helped identify demand for after-5 p.m. experiences. The team responded with three new products: an evening cooking class, a night market experience, and a firefly-watching tour.
“We started Bali Farm Cooking School to create our own market,” he says.
Since then, Bali Farm Cooking School has grown from a community project into a hands-on food experience in Taro Village, just north of central Ubud. Guests harvest organic vegetables from the garden and learn to cook traditional Balinese recipes.
GetYourGuide now drives 30% to 40% of bookings, making it one of the business’s most important channels. Here, Wayan explains how the business reached new audiences, strengthened its farm during the pandemic, and developed new experiences around traveler demand.
How did Bali Farm Cooking School begin?
The idea was simple: while many cooking classes were held in hotels, restaurants, or family homes, we brought travelers to our organic farm. Guests cooked with the ingredients we grew, saw how those ingredients were produced, and learned how to make Balinese food from the source.
We started very small — just me, one chef, and two helpers, with one stove, one pan, and one pot. When we expected more guests the next day, I went out and bought extra equipment myself.
The first year brought around 500 guests through local guides, hotels, and word of mouth. As bookings grew, so did the team. We now have 15 members, nearly 4x the size of the original team.
Feedback shaped that growth from day one. We handed out paper surveys after every class because it was easier for guests to write honest feedback. That input allowed us to improve the experience early.
How did GetYourGuide expand your reach?
Before partnering with GetYourGuide, more than half of our guests came from Australia. After the partnership, European and North American travelers became nearly equal to Australian guests. GetYourGuide also brings in more solo travelers.
GetYourGuide now drives 30% to 40% of our bookings. OTAs as a whole represent around half of bookings, while direct bookings account for 30% to 40%.
We joined GetYourGuide when the platform first expanded into Indonesia in 2017. We were the only cooking school on GetYourGuide in Bali at that time, which made us stand out early. We received recognition from GetYourGuide as one of the most popular cooking and culinary experiences in Indonesia, which was a very special moment.
What changed after the pandemic?
We moved to our current family farm location around the time the pandemic began. It was a difficult period, since we had already invested in the new project. However, instead of waiting, we focused on the farm. We grew food, learned more about permaculture, and brought those ideas into the experience.
In 2018 and 2019, we welcomed 6,000 to 10,000 guests a year. Since travel resumed in 2022, annual guest numbers have returned to that range.
Traveler behavior also changed. Before the pandemic, many guests booked directly or through local travel agencies. Today, more travelers book through OTAs instead, making GetYourGuide even more important to our growth.
How do you keep guests engaged for hours and earn a 5-star rating?
Our cooking class runs five to eight hours, so we try to balance education and entertainment. The first step is building trust, and that starts before guests even arrive. We try to reply to inquiries within five minutes, while guests are often still holding their phones. We also confirm dietary restrictions and transport details over chat.
Different OTAs once displayed slightly different map locations for the same pickup, confusing guests. Now we double-check pickup details directly with guests over chat, removing that confusion.
Once guests arrive, we treat them like a best friend or family member visiting from the city. That makes the experience feel warm and personal, and lets guests ask questions, laugh with us, and relax.
How do GetYourGuide insights help you develop new products?
We track demographics and demand trends through GetYourGuide's dashboard. GetYourGuide insights showed strong interest in evening activities after 5 p.m., so we developed three new experiences: an evening cooking class, a night market tour with dinner, and a firefly-watching tour in our village.
The dashboard pointed to another opportunity. Germany makes up 22% of our GetYourGuide guests, so we added German-language content to our website.
Dietary information shapes the kitchen too. Knowing vegetarian and vegan guest numbers in advance lets us rotate the menu and prepare plant-based dishes before guests arrive.
What's next for Bali Farm Cooking School?
In the short term, we want to create new classes around food from across Indonesia, not only Bali, to differentiate ourselves from other cooking experiences.
In the long term, we want to expand into experiential learning. We see an opportunity with schools, universities, families, and corporate groups.
Nowadays, many young people can get anything they want instantly on their phones, but they don't always know how food is produced. We want to give them the opportunity to experience that process here on our farm.
What advice would you give to other operators starting with GetYourGuide?
Just do it. You never know the taste of sushi until you try it. The same is true with GetYourGuide. Start, learn how the system works, and optimize as you go.
