Foreign passenger at Bali Airport Increases 17.4 percent, dominated by Chinese

File - Passengers at check-in counters at Bali Airport (ANTARA FOTO/Wira Suryantala/nym/pd/16)

Denpasar (Antaranews Bali) - Indonesia's state owned airport operator PT Angkasa Pura I said I Gusti Ngurah Rai airport of Bali recorded a 17.4 percent increase in the number of international passengers last year.

The international airport recorded 5.9 million international passengers in 2017 or 17.4 percent larger than the number recorded in the previous year, General Manager of the airport Yanus Suprayogi said here on Friday.

He said Chinese nationals made up the largest in the number of international passengers reaching 1.3 million or up 43.3 percent from the previous year.

Yanus said most of the Chinese came in groups using chartered flight landing at Ngurah Rai airport last year.

The chartered flight came from a number of large cities such as Beijing, Chengdu, Pudong Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Zhengzhou.

Meanwhile, the number of tourists from Australia declined slightly to 1.07 million from 1.08 million.

Yanus added passenger from India increased 49 percent to 266,000 from 179,000. Despite fluctuation, the number of foreign tourists to Bali was 8 percent larger than the target set by the Tourism Ministry in 2017. (*)