Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Sandiaga Salahuddin Uno admitted that his party is exploring cooperation with Indian airlines, namely Indigo and Vistara, to open direct flight routes from India to Denpasar, Bali.
“We have been exploring direct flights from India to Indonesia for almost six months now, we have seen that there are almost no direct flights from India to Indonesia,” said Sandiaga in The Weekly Brief with Sandi Uno which was monitored online in Jakarta, Monday.
It is hoped that the presence of direct flights to Bali will increase the number of visits by foreign tourists from Bollywood.
Through direct flights from India to Bali, he is targeting a 20-25 percent increase in visits by Indian tourists to Bali by 2024.
Meanwhile, Head of the Bali Province Tourism Office (Kadispar) Tjok Bagus Pemayun revealed
that visits by Indian tourists to Bali until August 2023 were recorded as many as 288,000 visits.
Looking at data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), visits by foreign tourists from India until
the first semester of 2023 are still in second place after the Australian market.
Cumulatively in January-June 2023, a total of 214,163 Indian tourists came directly to the Island of
the Gods, this achievement has increased compared to the same period last year when there were
31,945 Indian tourists visiting Bali.
In the future, the Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy also said that his party would not only
focus on attracting the number of foreign tourists visiting Bali. However, he also agreed with the
Acting Governor of Bali, SM Mahendra Jaya, to pay attention to dignified, quality and sustainable
tourism so that the negative impact of tourism is minimized.
“We don’t want Bali to have over tourism or excessive tourism and ultimately have to face the
negative impacts of over tourism ,” he said.
Furthermore, Sandiaga also revealed that the Acting Governor of Bali would focus on infrastructure
so that Bali could continue to improve in terms of connectivity. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Tourism
and Creative Economy will focus on developing human resources, tourism villages and socializing
regulations relating to Bali tourism, including a tourism levy of IDR 150,000 for culture which will be
implemented on February 14.
“We will introduce a levy for culture which will be carried out on February 14 2024. We will evaluate
its positive impact,” he concluded.
Source : Antara
