Nusa Dua festival to kick off in low season
Nusa Dua festival to kick off in low season
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
To attract more tourists to visit the resort island of Bali
during what is considered the low season, the government-run Bali
Tourism Development Corporation (BTDC) is set to hold a full-
blown art, culinary and sports festival in Nusa Dua.
The festival, which runs from Sept. 9 through Sept. 17, will
feature an array of art and cultural exhibitions, cultural
performances from participating countries such as Singapore,
Brazil and India and world-class sporting tournaments, as well as
a display of culinary fair, on the resort island's southern tip,
Nusa Dua.
Highlights of the festival will be the largest-ever
exhibition of tourism-related products that is hoped to encourage
more spending from the 20,000 local and foreign tourists who are
expected to attend.
There will also be a special traditional parade and an
international float parade as well as scores of record-breaking
attempts.
In sports, the organizer has arranged several competitions in
tourism-related sports such as beach soccer and an international
fishing tournament.
Other sporting contests that are hoped to attract more
participants and spectators will be the Nusa Dua 10 K, which has
been programed to be held annually, and the Wismilak World Tennis
Association (WTA) tour, a regular world sport event that has
recently been incorporated into the festival.
The festival will also feature some unique competitions such
as blanches chess exhibition and a bird-song competition.
The blanches chess exhibition will feature a battle between
Indonesian grand master (GM) Utut Adianto and GM Eugene Torre
from the Philippines.
Scores of live dancers will bring drama into the game by
turning themselves into live chessmen in Balinese traditional
costumes, and will make their moves to the accompaniment of
traditional musical instruments.
Another sports tournament of interest will be an international
lawns bowling championship.
Wine and tea tasting will cap a food festival that will be
held on several dates.
The festival will be concluded with a music concert that
features local bands such as Lolot, Superman Is Dead and Naif; a
rave party on Nusa Dua beach will be the last hurrah.
Nusa Dua festival was first held on a much smaller scale in
1996 to support Bali's positioning as the world's favorite
tourist destination.
The 2005 event will be the first with participation from
delegates from friendly countries.
The festival now has a more significant role in attracting
tourists to the resort island, which was dealt a severe blow from
a terrorist attack and the scares from severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) and bird flu.
The BTDC president director I Made Mandra said that the
festival was held during the low season in an effort to boost the
revenue of tourist operators on the resort island and had indeed
succeeded in the past in attracting more tourists.
"The festival has made a real difference as the occupancy
rates of most hotels reach 80 percent in the low season. It will
be difficult to book a hotel for September, so you'd better book
now," he said.