One week in Komodo: the itinerary and what it costs

The week: two nights ashore, four aboard, one to spare

The boat leaves Labuan Bajo at 2 p.m., and by sunset you are anchored off Kalong Island while the flying foxes lift off the island. Day 2 starts with the climb up Padar, then Pink Beach, then the dragons on Komodo Island, then Manta Point. Four nights aboard buy 12 dives with gear and one free night dive. ¹

Seven nights is the right length for Komodo because the cruise sets the clock. A 5 day, 4 night trip wants a day on each side of it: one to land and sleep, one to come back to a bed that stays still. Two nights in town at the front, four aboard, one at the end. ¹

Komodo sits badly inside a packed Indonesia route and well inside a slow one. The park covers 173,300 hectares across at least 142 islands, and a week of it leaves you nowhere near finished. The Indonesia country guide covers the island hops on either side. ⁶

How much does one week in Komodo cost?

The lines with a published price, per person, read from the operator's and the park's own pages on 26 September 2026.

The priced spine of the week is USD 2,131.33 per person: a USD 1,809 liveaboard fare, the USD 300 park and port fee, and a USD 22.33 land day at Wae Rebo. Flights, the three hotel nights and food sit on top, because every provider on this route sells those through a booking widget. ^{1, 7, 8}

USD 300 sits well above the itemized fees a diver would count. A secondary fee schedule puts marine park entrance at IDR 250,000 a day and the diver surcharge at IDR 25,000, which is IDR 275,000, or USD 15.35. Five days of that comes to USD 76.74. The operator's figure covers port charges too, so ask in writing what the USD 300 buys. ^{9, 8, 1}

What does the liveaboard fare include?

Twelve dives with gear, every meal, soft drinks, the land excursions and the airport transfers sit inside the fare, along with one free night dive, towels, hot water, air conditioning and wifi. Outside it: the USD 300 park and port fee, the camera fee at the park, and the dragon sanctuary ticket. ¹

1. 01

   Pick the dates around the boat

   The 5 day cruise boards at 2 p.m. and docks in the early afternoon of day 5. Book the flight into Labuan Bajo for the day before, and the flight out for the day after. ¹

2. 02

   Hold the cabin with 30 percent

   The deposit is 30 percent at confirmation, and the operator states it is non refundable. The balance falls due in full 60 days before departure. Put both dates in your calendar before you pay either. ¹

3. 03

   Prepay the park and port fee

   USD 300 per person goes with the confirmation. Ask in writing what it covers and what the park still charges on the day, since the fee is quoted as a single figure. ¹

4. 04

   Check the park slots are held

   A Komodo guide site reports a cap of 1,000 visitors a day across the park from 1 April 2026, about 350 of them at Komodo Island, booked through an online system, with June to August slots gone one to three weeks ahead. Your operator handles this; confirm that it has. ⁹

5. 05

   Pack for a boat, not a checked bag

   Dive gear comes with this fare, so the case you would otherwise check stays home. The one bag travel guide covers the carry on, and the liveaboard against shore diving comparison prices the land based alternative.

How do you get from Bali to Labuan Bajo?

Six airlines fly into Komodo International Airport, connecting three Indonesian cities directly and, since 2024, two international ones. The table below breaks down which carrier flies which route; book the one that actually flies the leg you want. ²

Komodo International Airport carries the code LBJ. Its runway runs 2,650 meters and its terminal covers 13,366 square meters after a 2022 expansion that widened the apron to 31,000 square meters and seven parking stands. International status arrived on 2 April 2024. ²

Check the timetable when you book. Schedules on the Denpasar leg change by season, and the carriers publish them on their own sites. ²

Two nights in town before the boat is a working choice, not padding. Bags go missing, flights slip, and the cruise leaves at 2 p.m. whatever your morning looked like. For the night before the boat, the thing that matters is the transfer: Meruorah Komodo Labuan Bajo, in the Plaza Marina complex downtown, puts itself a 10 minute drive from the airport. ^{3, 1}

What are the 2026 park fees and rules?

The tariff behind every ticket is Government Regulation 36 of 2024, cited by the park authority's own visitor protocol. The rupiah figures below are as reported by an independent Komodo guide site on 25 May 2026. ^{5, 9}

The drone permit costs eight times the entrance ticket. IDR 2,000,000 a day against IDR 250,000, and the protocol requires the permit before anything flies. Leave the drone in the cabin unless the footage is worth USD 111.63 a day. ^{9, 5}

• Certified divers only. The park's protocol bans scuba diving by anyone without certification. ⁵
• No anchor above 30 meters of water, except over 100 percent sandy bottom, and none at all in manta ray habitat or the manta transit lanes. ⁵
• Touching wildlife, approaching it too closely and feeding it are all banned, as is trekking off the marked trails or outside the timed entry windows. ⁵
• Jet skis, seadoos, banana boats and flyboards stay out of park waters. Campfires, cigarette butts, vandalism and removing sand, coral, plants or animals without written permission are offenses, and so is bribing a ranger, which the protocol names outright. ⁵
• A serious violation can bar a foreign visitor from every Indonesian conservation area for 6 months. ⁵

The park's own figures put it at 173,300 hectares inside West Manggarai Regency: 114,801 hectares of water and 58,499 of land, which add to the total exactly. Rain runs 800 to 1,000 mm a year, among Indonesia's lowest, and the dry season holds May to October with days near 40 C. ^{6, 10}

Where do the dragons live, and who takes you to them?

Day 2 of the cruise lands on Komodo Island in the morning, and the dragons are the reason it is there. Rinca is the park's other island where sightings are guided. Both walks go with a naturalist guide, and the park requires it. ^{1, 4}

Guiding inside the park runs through one body: Koperasi Serba Usaha Taman Nasional Komodo, which has held the park's nature tourism guiding license since 2006, reinforced by a Director General decree in 2021. The park states KSU keeps 50 naturalist guides. ⁴

The diving is why the fare reads the way it does. The park's named sites include Manta Alley, Crystal Rock, Castle Rock, Batu Bolong, Yellow Wall, the Cauldron and Tatawa Besar. Two of those, Tatawa Besar and Manta Point, appear by name on this cruise's own route, which is a useful cross check when any operator sends you an itinerary. ^{10, 1}

Komodo village, Wae Rebo and whose ground this is

Komodo Island is home to the Ata Modo, who name themselves the Modo people and the island Tana Modo. When the park was designated in the early 1980s they lost agrarian rights to both settlement and livelihood land. Labuan Bajo civil society organized public protests in August 2018 against resort construction on Rinca Island, and Komodo Island residents protested again in August 2019 against a provincial proposal to move them off the island. ¹¹

Researchers Dale and Afioma described the result in 2020 as a park and a parked community, with a residential zone under 17 hectares inside the park's 173,300. Book a dragon walk and you are walking through a place where that argument is live, and where the community is the one making it. ^{11, 6}

Mainland Flores is Manggarai country, and so is Wae Rebo. The Manggarai number about 725,000 across West Manggarai, Manggarai and East Manggarai regencies, more than 90 percent Roman Catholic with a Sunni Muslim minority on the coast. West Manggarai Regency is also the administrative home of the park itself. ^{12, 6}

Wae Rebo runs on its own terms, and they look different from the park's. The village takes visitors with no reservation system and no daily cap, where the park is reported to work to a 1,000 person quota booked online. The welcome ritual comes first, then the houses. Start early enough to walk up in daylight. ^{7, 9}

When should you go, and what should you check first?

May to October is the dry season, and it is also when the park is busiest. Rain across the year runs 800 to 1,000 mm, among Indonesia's lowest, and dry season days reach about 40 C. Peak months of June to August reportedly fill park slots one to three weeks ahead, so the boat and the slots want booking together. ^{10, 9}

The dollar figures on this page run on Bank Indonesia's own rate. JISDOR put the rupiah at IDR 17,917.00 per USD on 25 September 2026, IDR 17,898.00 on 24 September and IDR 17,803.00 on 23 September. The Federal Reserve's H.10 release, the usual reference for this kind of page, leaves Indonesia off its country list entirely, so the central bank's rate is the one to use. ^{8, 13}

• The cabin is held with the 30 percent deposit the operator states is non refundable, and the 60 day balance date is in your calendar. ¹
• The USD 300 park and port fee is prepaid at confirmation, and you have in writing what it covers. ¹
• Your passport and your Indonesian entry route are settled with the airline or the consulate.
• The flight into Labuan Bajo lands the day before the boat, on Batik Air or Indonesia AirAsia from Denpasar. ²
• Cash is set aside for the camera fee at the park and the dragon sanctuary ticket, which the operator prices by trek length on the day. ¹
• The rupiah rate is checked the week you pay: it moved from IDR 17,803 to IDR 17,917 per USD between 23 and 25 September 2026. ⁸
• If you are weighing this week against a land based dive trip, the liveaboard against shore diving cost comparison does the arithmetic, and the tropics packing list covers two weeks in a carry on.