Australians cool on Indonesia's
Bali By Gary LaMoshi
BALI - Another high season after another
bomb attack, and another struggle to recover for
Bali's tourism-driven economy. After the terrorist
bombings that targeted foreign tourists in October
2002, Bali, one of Asia's premier tourist
destinations, was on track for a record year in
2005 before October's explosions that killed 23
people, mostly tourists. Australian tourists had
led the previous recovery, but this time they're
leading the decline - and the bombs, it appears,
are only part of the reason.
Bali tourist
arrivals have fallen 19.8% for the first half of
2006, from 114,829 per month last year to 92,096
this year. For the estimated 1 million Balinese
who rely on tourism for their livelihoods, that
means everything from lower income from the
service charges that comprise the lion's share of
wages, to
working on a one-week-on,
one-week-off schedule, to selling a motorbike or
even the family land.
On the sunny side,
this year's tourism figures top the 63,901
arrivals the year after the first Bali bombings,
which then represented a 41% drop off from the
previous year. But there's a dark Down Under side
to this year's story. Australian tourist arrivals
are down 57% so far in 2006, from a monthly
average of 21,813 in 2005 to 9,466 this year. That
difference accounts for more than half of the
shortfall on Bali and has pushed Australia down to
third place on the tropical island's arrivals
chart behind Taiwan.
The Australian
shortfall is larger both in percentage terms and
in raw numbers than witnessed after the 2002
terrorist bombings that killed 88 Australians
among the 202 dead. Four Australians were among
the 23 dead, including three suicide bombers, in
last year's attacks.
Cheap beer and
sunburns Ryan Van Berkmoes, who researched
in June the next edition of Lonely Planet's
guidebook to Bali, has noticed the difference.
"Bali has suffered greatly because so much
of the mass Australian market is gone. These
aren't the people who wanted to go see a dance or
indulge in the island's culture. They weren't
coming to Bali so much because it was Bali but
because it was comparably close to home and
wouldn't cost a lot.
"Bali [now] is
damaged to such a degree that when you tell
someone at the market or in the pub that you're
going to Bali on holiday, they're likely to say,
'Why the hell would you go to that bloody place?'
So increasingly Australians are getting their
cheap beer and sunburns elsewhere."
Tourism officials confirm that lower-rated
one-, two- and three-star hotels are suffering
more than luxury properties, and Kuta, the
touchstone for Australian holidaymakers, is
noticeably quieter this high season.
"After the 2002 bombings, there was a
general outpouring of goodwill from around the
world and from Australia in particular," said
Australian Rodney Holt, owner of five restaurants
in Bali. "The goodwill from Australia that was
present after 2002 this time seems absent. And we
do not understand why."
Bali insiders cite
several reasons for the change in Australian
attitude. The most obvious factor has been a
series of high-profile drug cases involving
Australians in Bali. The first and most famous
involved beauty-school graduate Schapelle Corby,
who was arrested after customs officials found
nearly 10 kilograms of marijuana in her
boogie-board bag (see Indonesian trial for
Australia, June 4, 2005).
Corby, whose sister is married to a
Balinese and lives on the island, arguably should
have known that the best strategy was to keep
quiet and aim to negotiate the charges away.
Instead, the family launched an intensive media
campaign in Australia to assert their daughter's
innocence and blame Indonesia for discrimination
against foreigners. That misplaced effort ensured
that Indonesian prosecutors and judges threw the
book at Corby, to the tune of 15 years, later
raised to 20 on appeal.
After Corby,
Australian underwear model Michelle Leslie was
busted at a party with two Ecstasy pills in her
purse. After three months of incarceration,
including court appearances in Muslim dress -
Leslie claimed to have converted the previous year
- she got off with time served and wore a tank top
for her release photos. More seriously, nine
Australians were arrested in Bali for carrying
heroin from elsewhere in Southeast Asia on their
way to Australia. Two of the so-called "Bali Nine"
received death sentences.
"In Bali, people
are at a loss to understand how a few cases
involving tourists with drugs, which have been
happening for as long as foreigners have been
coming to Bali, created such headlines verging on
national hysteria in Australia," Holt said.
Corby's defense claimed that the drugs
were placed in her unlocked luggage by an
Australian airport smuggling operation. Leslie's
lawyers claimed alternately that she was holding
the pills for a friend and that they were an
emergency substitute for her usual prescription
dose of Ritalin. The Bali Nine arrests were
prompted by a tip from Australian Federal Police,
which sniffed out the scheme before the smugglers
arrived in Bali.
Pictured
frames Facts aside, there's a widespread
perception that the defendants were set up by
Indonesian authorities.
"Ask Australians
what is stopping them from coming to Bali [and
they say] they are scared of getting drugs planted
on them," Bali Hotel Association vice chairman
Robert Kelsall said. "Bookings for the wholesalers
in Australia started to show a severe decline back
in May 2005 when the Corby issue was strong."
Kelsall also chides the Australian media
for stirring up negative sentiments toward
Indonesia, focused on the drug convictions and a
series of contentious diplomatic incidents over
the past year. Canberra loudly protested the
sentence reductions and early release in June of
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the alleged spiritual leader
of terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, for his alleged
role in the planning of the 2002 Bali bombings.
Australia's dissent revived ever-popular charges
of interference in Indonesia's internal affairs.
Amid rising violence in Papua, Indonesia's
primitive easternmost province, Indonesian
officials once again pointed fingers at Australia,
where many Papuan separatists live and enjoy
grassroots support from various rights
organizations. That prompted a war of cartoons
depicting each nation's leaders as canines, a
particularly nasty insult to Indonesia's Muslim
sensibilities. Australia's subsequent decision to
grant political asylum to self-proclaimed Papuan
separatists prompted the recall of Indonesia's
ambassador to Canberra (see Diplomatic dog days
ahead, April 13).
"I don't
think anyone listens to the political issues,"
said Kelsall, general manager of a five-star hotel
in the heart of Kuta. "The Australian press tried
to make an association and tried to create an
issue trying to state the Indonesians would be
angry with the Australians if they came to Bali -
same as they tried to do during the Timor crisis."
He contended that "on the whole, the
people are not interested in politics. They just
want to get on with their lives and get things
back to normal ASAP."
Paradise
lost The drug issue is the second-biggest
reason for the decline of Australian visitors,
said Kelsall, who chairs a Bali Hotels Association
subcommittee on Australia that includes Bali
government officials and other tourism
stakeholders.
The No 1 reason, he
contends, was closure of Bali-based airline Air
Paradise, which launched in 2003 and quickly
became the island's unofficial flag carrier.
"Air Paradise was the No 1 cause for a
faster recovery from Australia" after the 2002
bombings, Kelsall explained. "Not only through
their ability to add more capacity, but their
strong marketing strategy and their ability to
quickly adapt strategies to the changing needs of
the market. They were willing to take risks and
add capacity before they knew they would fill that
additional capacity. Then they would try hard and
market it, and they succeeded at it."
However, Air Paradise was grounded after
last year's bombs, which remain at the heart of
Bali's current doldrums.
"Whereas after
the 2002 bombings there was a general optimism
that the worst was over, I do not have that
feeling now and feel the long-term effects of 2005
bombings are far more difficult to predict," Holt
said.
Gary LaMoshi has worked as
a broadcast producer and print writer and editor
in the US and Asia. Longtime editor of investor
rights advocate eRaider.com, he's also a
contributor to Slate and Salon.com, and a
counselor forWriting
Camp.
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