Bali expects to attract more Japanese tourists

By I. Christianto

DENPASAR (JP): Bali, Indonesia's leading tourist destination, expects to attract more tourists from Japan, which is considered a tourist market with both high potential and high spending power.

Bali Tourism Office head I Gde Pitana said his office always conducted annual research on foreign visitors, enabling tourism industry members to improve their services based on the information received.

He said that Bali's five major tourist markets were Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Britain and Germany.

"Since 1999, Japan has been the largest market for Bali. It was also the largest in 1994, but then second between 1995 and 1998," he said.

Japanese tourists have appeared again as the major market, replacing Australians after the unfavorable media reports of a cholera outbreak in Bali in 1995.

Actually, like other parts of Indonesia, overall foreign tourist arrivals in Bali declined in recent years following the financial crisis in the Asian region and domestic political turmoil. But the decrease was much less compared to Jakarta, where overseas travelers traditionally initiated their visit to Indonesia.

Pitana said Bali saw a total of 1.41 million foreign tourist arrivals last year, slightly up from 1.35 million in 1999.

From the those figures, Japanese tourists numbered 299,233 in 1999 and 362,270 in 2000.

"Japanese tourists daily average expenditure per person has been gradually decreasing to US$84.25 in 1998/1999, from $125.28 in 1997 and $160 in 1996. It doesn't mean they buy less, this is change is due to the depreciation of rupiah," Pitana said.

The average duration of international visitors' stay in Bali reached eight days per person, higher than the six or seven days recorded nationwide.

Based on the research, about 90 percent of Japanese tourists travel to Bali independently, with only 8.8 percent participating in group packages.

By age, most visitors from Japan to Bali are between 20 and 29 years old (35.9 percent), followed by people over 50 years (25.9 percent), 30 to 39 years (23.5 percent), 40 to 49 years (12.3 percent) and under 20 years (2.4 percent).

The proportion of females and males is almost equal, with males accounting for 50.6 percent of the total Japanese tourists.

It is interesting to note that 88 percent of the Japanese visitors to Bali specified that their trip was for holiday purposes. Other reasons were nominal, counting for less than 1 percent each, including business, conference/seminars or visiting family.

Character

How do the Japanese obtain information about Bali? A total of 35.8 percent of them admitted they received information from friends or family members who had visited Bali. Only 33.8 percent said they got the information from travel and tour agencies. Remaining sources of information include travel brochures (11.6 percent), advertisements in the media (9.9 percent) and airline and shipping companies (3.1 percent).

Indonesian Ambassador to Japan Soemadi D.M. Brotodiningrat said the Japanese people are known for their obedience and would not travel to a destination if there was an official warning from the (Japanese) government.

So far the Japanese government had never issued any serious warning advising citizens not to travel to Indonesia, he said.

Data from the Institute of Tourism Information Development shows that Japanese tourists prefer twin bed accommodation, are fond of shopping, dislike street vendors and desire convenience, quality sanitation and hygiene, as well as security and safety. Statistics also show that they rarely complain directly to a related service provider when dissatisfied, but will tell their travel agents or friends and relatives upon their return.

Data from the Bali Tourism Office shows that visitors from Japan were most dissatisfied with: dirtiness (53.4 percent), communications skills (11.2 percent), unsafe situations (8.4 percent), lack of information (7.3 percent) and poor transportation (5.6 percent).

Effort

Pitana said the local administration has always tried its best to attract and serve foreign tourists, as Bali is widely known as an island paradise.

The recent reopening of national air carrier Garuda Indonesia's route linking Denpasar and Fukuoka is expected to increase the number of Japanese tourists to Bali.

Garuda reestablished the Denpasar-Fukuoka service in early July, after scrapping it in 1998. It operates an A-330 jet three times a week. The airline expects to see 24,253 passengers flying in to Denpasar from Fukuoka by the end of this year and forecasts a growth rate of up to 7 percent by 2003.

With the Fukuoka connection reopened, Garuda now operates 18 flights between Indonesia and Japan. It flies to Tokyo seven times a week, Osaka and Nagoya each four times weekly.

In addition to Garuda, the Indonesia-Japan route is also served by Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways, Singapore Airlines and Malaysian Airlines.

Japan is actually one of the biggest tourist markets for many countries. The key feature of Japan's international travel market is the fact that some 18 million Japanese travel abroad each year.

In addition to Japan, the three most important markets in Asia for the Asia Pacific region are Taiwan, China and South Korea. These three nations generate more than 15 million tourists for the region and all have excellent growth prospects as a source tourists.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), foreign tourist arrivals increased by 5.9 percent to 2.08 million in the January-June period this year, compared to 1.95 million in the same period last year.

Bali is expected to help reinvigorate the country's tourist industry. Many people will agree that the island is more popular than other tourist destinations in Indonesia. Bali also took the shortest amount of time to record increases in the number of foreign tourist arrivals compared to the country's other 12 points of entry.

The Ngurah Rai International Airport, serving dozens of international airlines, is now the country's main gateway, replacing the capital's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

BPS reported that Bali's airport served a total of 710,397 passengers in the first half of this year, much higher than 522,154 recorded in Jakarta during the same period.

The number of foreign visitors through Ngurah Rai Airport, which accounts for 35 percent of the country's foreign tourist arrivals, rose by 16 percent to 135,000 in June from 118,000 in May, according to the data.

There are over 100 star-rated hotels with more than 16,500 rooms in Bali, in addition to about 1,300 non-star-rated hotels with a total of 16,100 rooms. Most of the star-rated hotels are managed by international hotel chains.

Clean beaches, beautiful views, grand hotels, warm smiles, religious ceremonies and cultural festivals are all typical experiences on a holiday in Bali. This and more, makes Bali Indonesia's premier tourist destination for both local and foreign holiday-makers.