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.