Sumba Island: Indonesia’s Hidden Treasure

Prai Ijing Village, Sumba Island
Prai Ijing Traditional Sumba Village

Discovering The Less Known Charm of Sumba Island

This question may pop up as one considers having an upcoming trip to Sumba Island. The beauty of Sumba has no doubt been exposed via both mass and social media platforms. However, at the moment it may still be slightly overshadowed by its neighboring island, Bali, and few travelers are really thinking of extending their stay to visit, well, another island, another beach, another sunset?

Nonetheless, as you dig deeper to unearth the treasures this island has to offer, you will find out that people have been visiting the island since the 1980s, just when Claude and Petra Graves found the perfect wave in Nihiwatu Beach; the starting point of one of the world’s best resort, NIHI (NIHI Sumba, 2025). We have been missing out a lot only to realize this now. So, is it too late to visit the island this year or next?

Geographies of Sumba Island

Before diving right into an exquisite adventure in Sumba Island, it is best to get to know the island in a general sense, starting with its geographies. Some comparisons are made to give a better understanding of Sumba Island and we are mostly taking Bali Island as a point of reference with the underlying assumption that most of us are already familiar with it.

Sumba Island is almost the southernmost island of Indonesia. The whole country is located right in the equator, between the latitude of 9oN and 11oS, and Sumba Island is located between 9oS and 10oS (Fadhilah and Adhi, 2022). In addition, it is located east of Bali, after Lombok Island.

Sumba Island is in the East Nusa Tenggara region, right under the island where Labuan Bajo, home to the famous Komodo Island, is situated. Its peculiar geographical setting gives Sumba Island a proximity to our neighboring country, Australia, and thus its weather is highly affected by the seasons in the Australian continent.

Sumba Island has an area almost twice the size of Bali. Bali island spans around 11,153 square kilometres (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2025) while Sumba Island is around 5,780 square kilometres (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, n. d.). Based on the data from Statistics Indonesia (2025), the projected total population in Sumba Island in 2025, based on its census on the four regencies in Sumba, is around 850,257 people.

The highest number of population is in the Southwest Sumba Regency with 335,500 people followed by the East, West and Central Sumba Regency, with population numbers of 262,975, 157,595 and 94,187 people respectively. The island has a really low population density. This is especially starking if we compare it to Bali Island in 2019*, with a total of 4,362,100 people (Statistics Indonesia, 2024). Bali island’s total population is five times greater than the total population on Sumba island, while Bali’s size is around half of the size of Sumba Island. 

Ratenggaro Beach, Sumba Island
Sunset in Ratenggaro Beach Sumba

As for the geographical features, Sumba Island is surrounded by pristine white sand beaches, most popular on the Western and Southwest Regency, turquoise colored lakes and a unique mixture of waterfalls and ricefield. In the East Sumba Region, it has coastal areas which extend to wavy lowland and hilly savannas (Siddiq et al., 2021). Overall, Sumba Island has quite a number of untouched natural wonders to explore and travelers will have many options to spend their time on Sumba Island.

In terms of the socio-economic dynamic of the island, tourism certainly plays a big role for its overall income. To date, the most popular regencies for travelers are the West, Southwest and East Sumba Regency. This is true by looking at the tourism statistical data of the number of accommodation in Central Sumba Regency, where it has only one basic accommodation as of the year 2022, compared to the other regencies with ten or more accommodations (Statistics Indonesia, 2024).

However, there is a huge gap in terms of the types of accommodation. The number of the ultra luxury resort hotels are really few, where you can easily name 2 to 3 world-class hotels sought after by the well-off, mostly foreign, visitors. These few luxury hotels on Sumba Island are having booking prices even higher than the national average (Oasis Group Indonesia, 2024).

Thus, it will never be a straightforward discussion when weighing the gains and losses of the tourism industry on Sumba Island. But we sincerely hope that the presence of this industry could bring value-added advantages especially to the local communities, in terms of their opportunities to get vocational training and education, thus increasing the general well-being of the local population in the long run.

Relevance of Studying the General Information on Sumba Island

Sumba Island is unlike Bali, at least this was true at the time this piece was written, and perhaps this will stay for the next couple of years. There is still a lack of proper infrastructure to support the growing interest to visit the island. Seeing how it is still sparsely populated, we will not find a wide selection of amenities such as convenience stores or local eating establishments along our road trip on the island. Most of the business are aggregated in the main populated areas, such as in Tambolaka or Waikabubak, both on the western and southwestern regency of the island. 

On the other hand, to the nature and adventure seeker, this seemingly underdeveloped island is home to raw and unspoiled natural wonders. Those who already had enough of the increasingly artificial and overly crowded sites on Bali Island, may find it liberating to finally find tranquility just 50 minutes away from it.

To be fair, as the clock is ticking fast, we all know that Sumba Island will not stay the same. The local population will surely appreciate proper infrastructural development to be carried out on the island, and this will in turn attract visitors alike. Then we shall expect that progress will come at an unprecedented rate, turning Sumba Island into the “Very Last Paradise on Earth” perhaps?

Watubela Beach Sumba Island
Fisherman In Watubela Beach Sumba

As we witness the recent happenings in Sumba as of the second quarter of 2025, we could say that it is still not too late to enjoy its beauty, before the wave of mass development starts to invade this island. We encourage that you, too, could start planning your trip to this island, to be one of the last ones (could be) to see for yourself the vast emptiness of Ratenggaro Beach, where you patiently wait for the horizon to change its hues from bluish to an orangish sunset sky.