Recent images published on social media have indicated an increase in the number of Australians visiting the Indonesian island in recent weeks, as tourists take advantage of low-cost flights and lenient entrance rules.
In fact, according to Tjok Bagus Pemayun, the chairman of the Bali Tourism Office, the majority of the 46,176 foreign tourists that arrived in Bali on Friday came from the country of Australia.
Indonesian authorities have withdrawn the majority of the country’s pandemic restrictions on foreign visitors as of today, including PCR testing and quarantine under some circumstances. As a consequence of the new policy, Indonesia anticipates an increase in foreign tourism of 3 million visitors this year.
Minister Sandiaga Uno said during a recent working visit to Australia that “at least in the next few periods, we are seeking 1.4 million tourist visits from Australia, and this is to assure that we are ready, and so we need to speed marketing activity in the market.”
After the easing of travel restrictions and the restarting of international routes, hotel occupancy in most sections of Bali is still deemed to be low, according to industry experts.
An estimated 1.56 million overseas tourists visited in the United States from January to December 2021, representing a 61% decline over the same period in 2020.
The number of overseas visitors to Indonesia climbed to 185,000 in February 2022, with the majority of them coming by air, representing a 97 percent rise over the previous year. During the period January to February 2022, the number of international visitors coming in Indonesia climbed by 336,000.
Room occupancy at top hotels has begun to climb in early 2022, despite the fact that it has not yet rebounded to levels seen in 2019.
Indonesia wants to guarantee that it does not slip behind other Southeast Asian locations in the reopening competition, especially because Chinese and Russian tourists are unlikely to return in 2022.
As a result, the Bali province administration has requested that the central government reinstate the Visa on Arrival (VoA) program for other countries, which is now suspended.
“After obtaining feedback from the tourist industry, we were able to recommend to the central government the continuation of the VoA program to an additional 16 nations, the majority of which were from Europe,” Pemayun said.
The good news is that the VoA program is now open to citizens of Brunei Darussalam, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Thailand, among other countries.