About Dolan
We've been planning Indonesia trips long before Dolan had a name.
Dolan didn't start as a product.
It started as conversations.
Friends coming to Indonesia would reach out with the same questions. Where should we go beyond Bali? Who should we trust? What's actually worth the time? Over the years, those conversations turned into something deeper. Relationships with guides, hosts, community leaders, and families across the archipelago. Knowledge you only get by showing up, listening, and returning.
Sharing that insight one WhatsApp message at a time wasn't sustainable.
At the same time, the internet wasn't doing travelers any favors. Search results were crowded with recycled advice, written far from the places they described. Entire regions rich in culture and history barely showed up at all.
So we built Dolan.
A place where trips are shaped by real local context. Where experiences are curated slowly, with intention. Where planning feels personal, grounded, and informed by people who know Indonesia beyond the headlines.
We're not here to tell you what everyone else is doing. We're here to help you discover what feels right for you, and meaningful for the places you visit.
Because Indonesia deserves to be experienced intuitively.
How we think about travel
These aren't marketing slogans. They're the filters we use when deciding what to recommend and who to work with.
Local first
Every recommendation traces back to a real person or community. We don't scrape blogs or regurgitate guidebooks. Our knowledge comes from ongoing relationships with the people who actually live and work in these places.
Depth over volume
We'd rather know one village well than have surface-level data on a hundred. This means we say "we don't know" sometimes. That honesty matters more than pretending to have all the answers.
Impact you can see
Tourism can extract or contribute. We choose contribution. Every experience we recommend supports real livelihoods, and we're transparent about exactly how your trip creates impact.
Room to wander
We build frameworks, not minute-by-minute schedules. The best travel moments are unplanned—we just help you be in the right place for them to happen.
Where this is going
We're not trying to be the next big travel platform. We're trying to build something that lasts—a layer of infrastructure that connects travelers with Indonesian communities in a way that benefits both.
Right now, that means an AI trip planner that actually understands the country. But we're thinking bigger: tools for local guides to reach international travelers directly. Payment systems that work for village guesthouses. Translation that preserves cultural nuance.
Indonesia has 17,000 islands and more cultural diversity than almost anywhere on Earth. Most of it is invisible to the global travel industry. We want to change that—not by making it “accessible” in the way that flattens everything, but by building bridges that work both ways.
We're building Dolan with partners who share this vision and are willing to do the work properly. That means prioritizing trust, sustainability, and long-term impact over quick growth.