Bali Records Drop In Tourist Arrivals From Neighboring Countries

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - The number of foreign tourists, particularly those from neighboring countries visiting Indonesia's tourist resort province of Bali, has decreased due to the volcanic ash being spewed as a result of the recent Mount Raung eruption.

"The number of tourists coming from Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore has declined in July 2015. Probably, they were afraid of being stranded in Bali and not being able to return on time," Tourism observer I Dewa Nyoman Putra stated here on Friday.

He noted that despite the maximum number of monthly tourist arrivals to Bali always being recorded from Australia, yet a drop was registered from 94,664 in June to 81,456 in July. Nevertheless, Australia still recorded the highest number of foreign tourist arrivals to Bali compared to those from other neighboring nations.

Putra pointed out that apart from concerns regarding the natural disaster, the decrease in the number of Australian tourists was also probably due to the execution of Australian drug convicts in Bali some time ago.

He said that based on data at the office of Bali's Tourism Service, 567,546 Australian tourist arrivals were recorded in the January-July 2015 period, up by 4.91 percent compared to 541,008 arrivals noted in the same period in 2014.

However, Australians still topped the list of foreign tourist arrivals in the January-July 2015 period, accounting for 24.81 percent of the total 2.2 million foreign tourist arrivals.

A drop in tourist arrivals from Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand to Bali was also observed.

The number of foreign tourist arrivals from Singapore dropped 20.41 percent from 104,921 in the January-July 2014 period, to 83,511 in the same period in 2015.

A similar trend was also observed in Malaysian tourist arrivals, which went down by 11.35 percent to 110,965 in the January-July 2015 period, from 125,173 in the same period last year.

In the meantime, the number of Thai tourists visiting Bali also reduced from 18,377 in the first seven months of 2014 to 17,585 in the corresponding period in 2015.

The tourism observer noted that the volcanic eruption has surely affected the tourism sector of Bali as it has disrupted transportation and has led to the cancellations of numerous flights to and from Bali.

"However, all this will only be temporary as the conditions are returning to normal," Putra argued.

He said that in total, foreign tourists arriving in Bali in the January-July 2015 period increased by 10.09 percent to 2.2 million compared to those arriving in the same period a year earlier. (WDY)