Tourists undeterred by visa-on-arrival -- for now

Tourists undeterred by visa-on-arrival -- for now

Wahyoe Boediwardhana and I Wayan Juniartha,
The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

The number of foreign tourist arrivals in Bali in February booked
a decent 26.4 percent increase compared to the same month in
2003, despite the implementation of the Visa-on-Arrival (VoA)
policy, which many pundits had predicted would seriously hamper
tourism development in Indonesia.

Data from the immigration office at the Ngurah Rai
International Airport showed that a total of 85,284 foreign
tourists entered the island in February. Last February, the
number was 67,469.

Out of that figure, 68,173 visitors entered the island through
the immigration office's VoA desks, thus generating a total of
US$1,651,720 in visa fees for the government of Indonesia.

"Needless to say, this is a relief. Now, we can safely say
that the implementation of the policy has not adversely affected
the number of visitor arrivals," said IGM Dhordy, the head of the
airport authority.

Similar statements have also been made by various government
officials, particularly from the tourism and immigration offices,
which in the previous months had been the subject of criticism by
the tourism industry due to the implementation of the VoA policy.

"Yes, we do have the general impression that the policy has
not resulted in, say, a decrease in arrivals. But, let's just
wait for the availability of more robust and comprehensive data
before jumping to any conclusions," said Agung Prana, the
chairman of the Bali branch of the Association of Indonesian
Travel Agents (ASITA).

"In the absence of solid data, we could also assume that the
number of arrivals in February would have been much bigger if the
VoA policy had not been implemented, couldn't we?" he added.

Prana disclosed that members of his association were still in
the final stages of gathering data and statistics on the impact
of the new policy.

Furthermore, he also pointed out that the government data did
reveal many disturbing aspects. For instance, it showed that in
February at least 78 visitors had been denied entry to the island
for VoA-related reasons.

These unfortunate visitors were citizens of those countries,
that had not been listed as the recipients of either free visas
for short-term visits (BVKS) or visas-on-arrival.

Therefore, they are obliged to apply for visas at the
Indonesian embassies in their respective countries prior to their
departures to the island.

"Apparently they failed to do so and we had to send them back
on the next available flights to their respective ports of
origin," Bali immigration chief I Gde Widiartha said.

The eleven countries that receive the BVKS privilege are
Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Hongkong
SAR, Macau SAR, Chile, Morocco, Peru and Vietnam, while the 21
countries that are entitled to the VOA facility are the USA,
Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, UAE,
Finland, Hungary, UK, Italy, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea,
Norway, France, Poland, Switzerland, New Zealand and Taiwan.

"Instead of immediately implementing the policy to its
fullest, I still believe that we should provide a period of
transition, probably between three and six months, during which
time we can educate visitors on the policy and be more flexible
in relation to the penalties involved," Prana stated.

This was, he argued, a much better policy than summarily
putting a weary traveler back on a plane for another, say, 16-
hour-long transcontinental flight.

Perhaps more importantly, when the latest data for February is
compared with the data on foreign tourist arrivals over the last
five years, a sharp decline actually becomes evident. With one
single exception in 2001, the data from 1999 up to 2003 shows
that the number of foreign tourist arrivals in the month of
February is generally higher than in January.

In 2003, for instance, the number of people entering Bali in
February was 67,469 people, which was 6,633 more visitors than
the number recorded in the previous month. This year, however, an
anomaly is evident with the number of tourists recorded in
February being 18,778 less than the 104,062 tourists recorded in
January.

"Was the implementation of the VoA policy responsible for the
decrease? Well, I believe it's still to early to make a judgment
-- any judgment," tourism observer Dwi Yani stressed.