New bombings deal Bali tourism major blow: Businesses

Rita A.Widiadana, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

With Bali's tourist industry still not fully recovered from the Oct. 12, 2002 bombs, the latest attacks have made businesspeople increasingly gloomy about the island's future.

The owner of several travel agencies and resorts, Agung Prana, feared the Saturday night bombings would badly affect tourism and related activities.

"I feel very pessimistic about the future of Bali after this incident," Agung said.

While the latest blasts and the death toll were not as big as those three years ago, the impact of a second attack would mean Indonesia would lose the trust of holidaymakers, he said.

State Minister of Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik had frequently insisted the country was safe and Bali was still as beautiful as before. "But the blasts in two locations reflected our inability to ensure security for visitors and this will work to ruin the image of Bali as one of world's top destinations. Trust is crucial in tourism and the hospitality industry," Prana said.

After the 2002 attacks killed 202 people, a series of bomb attacks in Indonesia and a string of negative foreign travel advisories helped kept tourists away, and it was not until early 2004 that Bali was again pulsing with visitors.

Before October 2002, the number of tourist arrivals at Ngurah Rai International Airport reached 5,000 people a day, around two million a year. The 2002 bombings brought down the number to less than 1,000 a day for many months but the rate has slowly increased to around 4,000 a day before the latest blasts. Hotel occupancy rates most recently soared to between 90 and 100 percent from July until September 2005.

After the weekend's blasts guests were being advised to stay inside their hotels for the short-term.

Chairman of the Bali Hotels Association, Robert Kelsall, expressed hope that governments around the world would support Bali as they did following the New York, Madrid and the London bombings when they did not issue travel advisories about those cities.

"If travel advisories are issued, (those countries) will be playing into the terrorists' hands and once again such advice will have devastating effects on people of Bali," Kelsall said in a statement on Sunday.

Shortly after the 2002 bombings, distraught tourists abandoned the island en masse, leaving the majority of hotels, resorts almost completely vacant and thousands of workers without job.

Around 1.3 million out of Bali's 3.5 million people work in tourism-related industries.

Ika Nazaruddin, who is an event organizer for public relations firm PACTO MICE, was shocked by the Saturday blasts.

"We are now preparing several international conferences at various venues in Bali. This tragedy is likely to put a big question-mark over all our preparations," she said.

But not everybody was losing hope.

Eddy Liong, Singapore Airlines Manager for Surabaya/Bali, said that while it was early days, there had been no large-scale cancellations of visits to Bali.

"Singaporeans, Europeans and Asian tourists are still flying in to Bali three times a day. I hope that this condition will continue," he said.