Bintan Regency, Indonesia

Cempedak Island

Price per night from$459.01

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (SGD592.90), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Cempedak Island Photos

Style

Lo-fi barefoot fantasy

Setting

The Riau factor

Explore

More hotels in Bintan Regency More hotels in Indonesia

Cempedak Island is an adults-only private retreat that lets its surroundings do most of the persuading. Off Bintan in the Riau Islands, it pairs light-touch service with open-air living, sea views and an unhurried rhythm of swims, spa treatments, forest walks and sunset drinks. Villas are spacious but simply dressed, with private pools; menus follow the day’s ingredients, and the mood is barefoot ease rather than polished-resort performance. 

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

The hotel’s cookbook, Island Life: Recipes from Nikoi & Cempedak Islands (one copy for each stay)

Facilities

Photos Cempedak Island facilities

Need to know

Rooms

20 villas.

Check–Out

11am, and check-in is at 1pm. Both are flexible, on request and subject to availability.

More details

Rates don't include the compulsory S$121 daily board charge, which covers all meals, tea, filter coffee and some activities. You can prepay these charges ahead or pay locally in Indonesian Rupiah.

Also

The villas are duplex-style, and there are steps to reach the bar and restaurant, so you’ll need enough mobility to be able to contend with stairs, sandy paths and island terrain. Unfortunately, Cempedak Island is not set up for wheelchair users.

At the hotel

Two natural-grass tennis courts that can also be used for croquet, archery, boathouse, snorkelling kit, kayaks, stand-up paddleboards, sailing and windsurfing equipment, and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: iPad for contacting your villa host, ceiling fan, mosquito net, cafetière, tea-making kit, yoga mat, foam rollers, bathrobes and custom bath products. Hair dryers and ice boxes are available on request.

Our favourite rooms

All villas at Cempedak Island are open to nature and embrace the resort's seamless approach to indoor-outdoor living. Beyond this, your choice comes down to two types. Beach Villas have direct access to the sand, and the sound of waves after dark is hard to beat. Seaview Villas flaunt a wider panorama, with bay and island views from a higher perch; they’re romantic and private, though their leafier setting may bring a little more wildlife theatre.

Poolside

There's an outdoor, unheated saltwater pool at the boathouse, open 8am to 5pm and with no lifeguard. Every villa also has a private plunge pool, so cooling off is never much of a commute.

Spa

Rock Spa is tucked above granite boulders in a quiet eastern mangrove bay, with three circular open-air treatment rooms and waves in place of whale music. Treatments draw on Indonesian techniques; couples’ rituals can be arranged. Book early, then surrender — even the oil choice is handled for you.

Packing tips

Bring reef-safe SPF, swimwear, linen layers, a proper paperback and a relaxed attitude to sharing space with nature. The hotel keeps disposable amenities to a minimum, so pack your toothbrush, toothpaste and any must-have bathroom bits. Cempedak’s natural bath products are designed to help deter mosquitoes, but trusted insect repellent is still worth bringing.

Also

There is only one television screen on the island, and it lives in the bar — which tells you almost everything about the intended pace.

Pet‐friendly

Pets aren’t allowed at Cempedak Island. See more pet-friendly hotels in Bintan Regency.

Children

This is an adults-only island, welcoming guests aged 15 and over only. Sister stay, Nikoi Island, is your family-friendly option.

Sustainability efforts

As private-island stays go, Cempedak is unusually thoughtful about its footprint, with practical measures built into the way the resort is designed and run. Its most persuasive measures are woven into the everyday running: open-air bamboo architecture is designed to work with sea breezes and ceiling fans rather than air-conditioning, with solar panels and low-energy lighting helping to keep consumption down. Fixed daily menus help reduce food waste, with some vegetables, eggs and chicken from a Bintan farm and on-island gardens, supplemented by local suppliers. Food scraps are processed through a Black Soldier Fly system, discarded glass is crushed for use in on-property cement, and around 75 per cent of water consumption was recycled as greywater for irrigation and landscaping in 2025. A resident marine biologist researches sea turtles, coral reefs and water quality. The hotel’s sister charitable arm, The Island Foundation, supports education in local island and coastal communities.

Food and Drink

Photos Cempedak Island food and drink

Top Table

At dinner, ask for a tree-shaded dining pod for the most private, romantic feel. For sunset, the restaurant’s balcony tables make full use of that rocky-point view.

Dress Code

Barefoot, salt-haired and just-dressed-enough: linen shirts, easy dresses, sandals and anything that can handle a sandy path and one last rosella-tinted cocktail.

Hotel restaurant

Cempedak’s only restaurant makes a virtue of leaving the menu to the island. Hand-built from bamboo on a rocky point, it has elevated walkways, a long sunset-facing balcony and tree-shaded dining pods that feel made for two. The daily set menu is chalked up by the entrance and follows what’s fresh: local seafood, Bintan-farmed produce, island-grown herbs and whatever looks best at market. Breakfast might be Continental or Indonesian-leaning, with fresh fruit, eggs, homemade muesli, pastries, juices and pressed coffee. Lunches are generous woven-tray spreads — soto medan, pepes ikan, nasi kuning, fish curry, beef rendang, sambal and salads bright with coconut and lime. By dinner, things shift into courses: perhaps tuna naniura, barbecued meats, market vegetables and something darkly sweet to finish. Staff talk you through the next meal ahead of time and check for allergies, dislikes and dietary needs; portions can be topped up, too. The fixed-menu format feels less restrictive, more restful: the island does the sourcing, the kitchen does the thinking, and your only job is to choose the view. 

Hotel bar

Dodo Bar is Cempedak’s main drinking den, waiting by the jetty in a triple-tier bamboo tower with a spiral pagoda roof. It opens at 5pm and keeps going until the last sips are sunk, with classic cocktails, local-flavoured mixers, island-brewed beer and a favourite bespoke pour, The Dodo’s Last Sip: gin, fresh lemon and orange juices, and house-made rosella syrup. Smaller bars at the restaurant and boathouse keep daytime drinks within easy reach. 

Last orders

Breakfast is served from 7am to 10am, lunch from noon to 2pm, and dinner from 6pm to 9pm.

Room service

No room service here — a small nudge to leave the villa and let the island feed you properly.

Location

Photos Cempedak Island location
Address
Cempedak Island
Air Gelubi Bintan Pesisir Bintan Regency
Riau Islands
Indonesia

Cempedak Island is a private-island retreat off Bintan in Indonesia’s Riau Islands, reached from Singapore by ferry, car and speedboat.

Planes

Singapore’s Changi Airport is the smoothest international gateway, rather than the closest; from the airport, it’s around 10 minutes by taxi to Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. The nearest airport is Raja Haji Fisabilillah International in Tanjung Pinang, on Bintan, which has daily connections from Jakarta.

Automobiles

You’ll have no need for a set of wheels. Cempedak itself is car-free, so once you’re there, the pace drops to footpath speed. And private transfers take care of the rest.

Other

The best way to reach the island is by ferry, followed by round-trip car and boat transfers arranged by the hotel (additional charges apply). Take the two-and-a-half-hour crossing from Singapore's Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal to Bintan in Indonesia, where you’ll be met by a private car for the one-hour transfer to Bintan’s east coast, then board the hotel’s speedboat for the 30-minute crossing to Cempedak Island.

Worth getting out of bed for

At Cempedak Island, activity is optional rather than itinerary-shaped — though there’s plenty to tempt you from your sea-soundtracked bed. Start with the 9am nature walk, where guides talk through the island’s flora, fauna and sustainability efforts, then drift towards the sea for snorkelling, kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding, sailing, windsurfing or a jetty jump when the tide allows. Back on dry land, there’s grass-court tennis, croquet, archery, sunrise yoga, cooking classes with the chefs and moon-gazing through the hotel telescope. Or accept the island’s quiet dare and do almost nothing at all.

Local restaurants

No need to venture from the island — the daily board charge includes three meals a day at the hotel’s dining spot. 

Reviews

Photos Cempedak Island reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this adults-only, private-island hotel in Indonesia’s Riau Islands and unpacked their salty swimwear and sand-dusted sandals, a full account of their castaway break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Cempedak Island in Bintan Regency… 

The journey from Singapore — ferry, cross-island drive, speedboat skim — only sharpens the sense of arrival at Cempedak Island. This adults-only private isle off Bintan tucks two-storey bamboo villas among tropical greenery, their alang-alang roofs rising above granite boulders and slender curves of sand.  

Days here are gently steered, never scheduled. Arrive to cold towels and island-grown tamarind soda; wake to hornbills in the trees; fill the hours with guided forest walks, saltwater swims, kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding and sea-breeze-cooled treatments at the Rock Spa, before supper is served under a rustling canopy. 

The 20 open-air villas keep things deliberately pared back, with vaulted bamboo bedrooms, private plunge pools and sea or beach views doing the decorative work. For couples who like their nature close and their service soft-footed, Cempedak makes switching off feel less like self-improvement and more like willing surrender. Expect daily-changing Indonesian-led menus, a bamboo bar built for sundowners, and that rare private-island feeling: close enough to reach, far enough away to forget everything else. 

Book now

Price per night from $459.01

Hotels nearby

Villas nearby