UBUD, Bali - The island's ability to stand out from the crowd has
for decades made Bali an acclaimed tourist destination. Its distinctive
landscape of terraced rice fields on volcanic slopes leading to white sand
beaches and renowned surf, epitomizes a tropical paradise. A Hindu environment,
seen in the island's more than 1,000 colorful temples, adds cultural flair.
These days, Bali tourism has an added distinction: immunity from the global
economic crisis. Bali, an island of 5,632 square kilometers (2,175 square
miles) at the center of the Indonesian archipelago, is heading for its third
consecutive year of record foreign tourist arrivals, despite the crisis and
terrorist hotel bombings in Jakarta, the national capital, in July.
To be sure, the global economic crisis has touched certain parts
of Bali's US$2 billion-plus tourism industry, but overall the island is
booming. Statistics through August project 2.22 million tourist arrivals, 12.8%
above last year's record of 1.97 million. That's 52.2% above arrival numbers
for 2004, a record-setting year between the Bali terrorist bombings of 2002 and
2005, and nearly double arrivals in 1998.
"This is our best year ever," said Brian Aldinger, who opened Naughty Nuri's
restaurant in Bali's artsy hill town of Ubud with his wife Nuri in 1995. "We're
packed every night. Our friends in the hotel business say they're full - in
October!" Traditionally, Bali's busy months have centered on July and August
along with the Christmas-New Year period.
Veteran Bali public relations director Kora Amalwati, working with the
season-ending WTA women's tennis tour's Commonwealth Bank Tournament of
Champions, which will be held on the island next month, lists five factors in
Bali's resistance to the current global economic woes: the island's vast
variety of tourism products; easy, cheap access via budget airlines; tourism
industry stakeholders promoting Bali to new markets such as Russia, India, the
Middle East and China; and political problems at other Asia tourist
destinations.
While Bali is powering ahead, its visitor profile is changing, with some
long-term trends accelerating due to the global economic situation. Fewer
tourists are coming from recession-hit Western countries, magnifying the growth
in markets closer to home. "Europe is a little down," AsiaBeds travel agency
executive Ida Gusti Agung Mahadewi reports, "but the Asia-Pacific market is
making up for that: Australia, of course, but also Southeast Asia."
Neighboring Australia has displaced traditional leader Japan as Bali's leading
source of tourists, with Australian arrivals averaging a monthly 34,000 this
year.
Australia has suffered less from the global recession than many other
industrialized countries and many of its Asian neighbors, thanks to its
resource-based exports to fuel-hungry China. Last week, the Reserve Bank of
Australia raised interest rates to stave off inflation as the economy regains
momentum. Arrivals from Japan, reportedly now emerging from its worst recession
since the end of World War II, are down 8% from a year ago, and nearly 10% from
their peak in 2000.
Mainland China sent 1,898 visitors to Bali in 2001, the first year enough
Chinese visitors showed up for authorities to tally their numbers. This year,
China ranks third in arrivals, averaging nearly 17,000 per month. Former number
three spot occupants Taiwan and South Korea have been hard hit by the
recession, while China has countered the downturn through a massive stimulus
package.
Although Chinese authorities probably didn't intend their stimulus funds to
wind up in overseas vacation destinations, staving off recession is helping to
maintain prosperous lifestyles, which increasingly include travel abroad.
Macau, the gambling enclave that relies on Chinese tourists, has seen a rebound
as China has primed the economic pump.
Malaysia, with 8,292 arrivals in Bali in 1999, is sending an average 11,732
visitors per month this year, putting it fourth on the arrivals list. Tourists
from the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) group accounted
for 3.5% of Bali arrivals in 2000 - the grouping wasn't even counted in 1999 -
averaging a mere 4,165 monthly. In 2009, ASEAN provides 10.5% of Bali's
arrivals, approaching 20,000 per month. Pioneer budget airline Air Asia flies
direct to Bali from ASEAN hubs Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok, with one
way fares starting as low as US$60.
As reported by website BaliDiscovery.com, Bank Indonesia projects Bali's
economic growth will slow because Asian visitors spend less per day and leave
sooner than longer-haul visitors from Europe. But this month's anniversaries of
the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings, which combined killed more than 220 people,
the majority of them foreign tourists, and sliced arrivals to 993,029 in 2003,
serve as important reminders that the situation has been far worse.
Home cooking
Direct arrivals reflect only part of Bali's success story. Tourists to Bali can
also arrive through other Indonesian cities, most notably the capital, Jakarta,
and not all tourists to Bali are foreigners.
"People underestimate domestic tourists," Aldinger notes. "They're not drinking
martinis, but they eat and they turn the place over."
Since the 2002 bombing, the Indonesian government has encouraged domestic
travel to Bali, rearranging national holidays for more long weekends. That's
also coincided with strong economic growth in Indonesia, averaging 5.4% over
the past seven years. Indonesia's growth in the first half of this year slowed
to 4.2%, still quite respectable in a global recession that has pummeled its
more export-oriented neighbors.
The recession has crept into certain aspects of Bali tourism. "In terms of
business, it's been really good," restaurateur and Ubud Writers and Readers
Festival founder Janet De Neefe said. "In terms of the festival, it hasn't been
as positive."
The just-concluded sixth annual festival featured Nigerian Nobel laureate
playwright Wole Soyinka, New Zealand's Lloyd Jones, whose Mister Pip was
short-listed for the 2007 Booker Prize, and India's Vikas Swarup, whose novel Q&A
became the film Slumdog Millionaire, and it seemed as well attended as
in past years. The festival also made its first foray beyond Bali with a
reading and performance by 15 Indonesian and international writers at the
Borobudur temple in Yogyakarta, Java.
De Neefe, an Australian who started the festival to help lift spirits and
tourism numbers after the first Bali bombings, nevertheless laments, "You
wonder why you do it when people and big business don't support it." Before
this year's festival, an appeal went out for donations of frequent flyer miles
to the festival to provide transport for authors.
Corporate cutbacks have also hit the business sector collectively known as MICE
- meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions - a lucrative niche market
with both domestic and international companies. "Despite the strong continued
interest in Bali as a leisure destination, perhaps even an increased interest
in these economic times, we have felt the impact of a dramatic decline in
enquiries and delivery opportunities here over the past year," Tirian
International director Gaia Grant reports.
The company specializes in programs for corporate meetings and conferences,
including Balinese team building sessions. "While in busy times we may be
dealing with up to several corporate client groups a month, for this second
half of 2009 we have no clients at all booked to come to Bali."
Author of A Patch of Paradise, a book about relocating from Sydney to
Bali with her husband and children, Grant believes that the general economic
malaise and Bali particulars has factored in the MICE retreat. "Many companies
are simply not spending on these perceived discretionary extras," Grant said.
"So the conferences are simply not going ahead in any destination.
"Where a modest budget has been allocated to meetings and conferences, it is
more likely to go towards a simple domestic destination rather than a
perceived-to-be-exotic international destination like Bali."
Grant also noted the lingering security issues associated with Bali.
"With heavy [government] travel warnings still in place, corporate companies
are not willing and often not able to take the risk. Many have higher level
restrictions in place prohibiting them from holding meetings in a country with
such travel restrictions. For others, the security issues have been enough to
deter individuals, and as soon as there are a few concerned individuals, there
is an issue for the group as a whole,” she said.
"Such a trend has been so unfortunate, as Bali always has been and continues to
be an amazing destination."
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of
Hong Kong On Air,
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
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