It helped a luxury resort on the Indonesian island shave US$100,000 off its annual electricity bill, a beach club use 23 million litres less water a year and a water park eliminate the annual cost of trucking 250,000kg of trash to landfills by investing in a single compost heap that has produced tons of free organic fertiliser.

“Implementing sustainability initiatives should translate into doing business differently and identifying many opportunities that were missed before,” said co-founder Sean Nino, a German national.

“It also helps you attract strong talent and create strong teams, it turns your marketing into a story people want to believe and sets you up for demand from new generations,” Nino said.

“Today’s protesting teenagers are tomorrow’s customers. They’re looking for green businesses to get their goods and services.”

Booking.com’s most recent annual Sustainability Travel Report backs that up. It queried more than 29,000 people online in 30 countries and territories including the US, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia.

The results showed that 83% of respondents said sustainable travel is vital, 73% said they would be more likely to stay in a hotel with sustainability practices and 53% said they get annoyed if a hotel prevents them from acting sustainably, for example, by selling drinking water in disposable plastic bottles or not providing free refills for their canisters.

The coronavirus pandemic cost Eco Mantra most of its clients after international tourism to Indonesia ground to a halt in April last year and budgets for nonessential work at venues disappeared.

But the lull also provided an opportunity for entrepreneurs already converted to the cause to launch new sustainable tourism enterprises.

Such moves with an eye on the future come as Indonesia has recently begun a limited reopening of Bali to international travel, while other countries in Southeast Asia also have taken steps to ease restrictions in pandemic-hit tourism sectors.

But in a reminder of the unpredictability of the global health crisis, concern has suddenly flared over the Covid variant known as Omicron that is driving countries to reimpose some limits, Indonesia among them.

Still, Bali enterprises are forging ahead. One that is turning a profit is Potato Head Studios, a 95-room luxury beachfront hotel in the Seminyak tourist district that opened on July 3.

To minimise its carbon footprint, it was built using recycled bricks, while industrial rubber rejects went into creating indoor flooring and some of the furniture was made with recycled plastics.

On arrival, guests are given zero-waste kits with bamboo cutlery and straws. Rooms are stocked with slippers made from coconut husks as well as biodegradable sunscreen and bug spray.

The concept has struck a chord with wealthy Indonesian tourists deterred from travelling abroad during the pandemic, who pay up to US$350 per night.

The hotel’s occupancy rate for October was 50% – far outpacing the 9.5% average across all accommodation properties in Bali, according to data supplied by Indonesia’s statistics bureau, BPS.

“I don’t think hotel guests want sustainability shoved down their throats. But we believe by adding sustainability into our business model it enriches the guest experience because they know their holiday is making less of an impact,” said Simon Pestridge, chief ‘guest experience’ officer at Potato Head Bali, a multivenue site incorporating the main hotel, a second hotel, a 2,000-seat beach club and Ijen, a zero-waste seafood restaurant created with Eco Mantra.

“It also makes your business more profitable because the cost of not being sustainable is too expensive,” said Pestridge, a former Nike global vice-president from the UK.

“Take the cost of making compost out of used napkins instead of throwing them away. It is cents in the dollar compared to the traditional way of trucking it to landfills – fundamental proof that you can save money for your company and do something good for the environment and the tourism industry.”

A few kilometres to the north in the rapidly urbanising greenbelt area of Canggu, Premadhan Cottage Canggu is a guesthouse nestled among rice fields, with a striking multitiered lobby stretching 25m high made from coconut timber, teak and bamboo – an adaptation of the longhouses used by the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra.

There are only seven cottages on 3,300sqm of land, most of which is covered by gardens and paddies.

The guests, Western backpackers riding out the pandemic in Bali, pay US$420 per month for a room. It’s double the asking price charged by modern multilevel guesthouses in Canggu.

But they are half or three-quarters empty, while Premadhan Cottage Canggu has been fully occupied since it opened for business in April last year.

“I could have built many more cottages on this land but I wanted to keep the rice paddies and fruit trees,” said Gagus Indrayasa, who designed, built and now manages the guesthouse.

“For me, it’s very important to preserve our traditions. It was the right decision because the tourists in Bali right now want to stay in nature, not in big hotels.”

Martin Siladi, a guest from Slovakia, agreed: “I’m comfortable here, my room is very nice and I love the traditional design. We are living in a garden surrounded by trees. Here you have space and privacy that you would not find at a big hotel.”

An hour’s drive north of Canggu, on the outskirts of Bali’s spiritual capital Ubud, is the Astungkara Way, a centre focused on regenerative farming.

Here, tourists get their hands dirty planting rice while learning about the Balinese principle of tri hita karana: harmony among people, nature, and the divine.

It is also an overnight stopover on the Astungkara Trail, a 132km-long 10-day walk from Canggu to the north coast – a pilgrimage the Astungkara Way website says invites people to “slow down, to take notice, to connect with nature and local communities”.

But the centre is facing an uphill battle luring domestic tourists who prefer holidaying in urban areas like Seminyak.

“We’re getting sign-ups pretty much only from our social networks – foreigners living in Bali,” said co-founder Tim Fijal, a teacher from Canada who launched Astungkara Way against all advice a month into the pandemic.

“We’ve managed to reach profitability during the pandemic period and are projecting increased profitability once we see a greater influx of international tourists,” he said.

“My feeling is we’re ideally positioned to capture a segment of the tourism market that’s finding it increasingly difficult to justify travel without purpose. And as our offering aligns with what Bali’s leaders are wanting to promote for the future of tourism on this island, we’re confident our offering will be well-received.”

Back in Canggu, the Mexicola Group, a hospitality company behind Da Maria, Luigi’s Hot Pizza and some of Bali’s most popular restaurants serving European-style food and drinks, is preparing to launch Mosto, its newest venue in December.

A ‘natural’ wine bar, Mosto will serve only wines that are small-batch organic, artisanal or biodynamic – which includes the use of organic fertilisers and astrologically-based planting methods.

Food will be prepared under the same zero-waste concept as Potato Head’s Ijen, where everything from bones and brains to the roots of ingredients are incorporated into the menu. Think ox tongue pastrami and bone marrow tapas.

“For a long time, tourism in Bali has focused on big business, big buildings on the beach, massive volumes in sales and lots of staff,” says Mexicola Group’s general manager, Isabella Rowell from Australia.

“But we’re trying to create something different by setting up the first natural wine bar in Indonesia. It also shows our focus is not on ROI (return on investment) but on the integrity of what we believe in, a no-waste environment. That will no doubt have traction in sales.”