Bali is Booming: Foreign arrivals to island up 23.7 percent in 2017

It’s been a busy year for Bali, with foreign arrivals to the island up 23.7 percent.

The stat, just released earlier this week, measures foreign tourist arrivals to the Indonesian resort island from January to May 2017, which was recorded at 2.3 million. That’s compared to 1.86 million during the same period last year.

The vast majority of those arrivals—2.28 million of them—came into Bali via the island’s Ngurah Rai International Airport, while the remainder came via sea port, says head of Central Statistics Agency (BPS) Bali Province office, Adi Nugroho.

Crushing its government-set goal last year of 4.6 million foreign arrivals, Bali is well on its way to meeting is current goal of 5.5 million foreign tourist arrivals for the year, a figure which means Bali alone is supposed to carry 40 percent of Indonesia’s ambitious nationwide foreign arrivals target for 2017.

Taking the top spot on TripAdvisor’s ‘Best World Destinations List’ this year, Bali is certainly gaining popularity beyond just the Australian market.

Of the 10 countries supplying the most tourists to Bali, eight have significantly jumped up in numbers, while two have decreased. Those eight are lead by China this year through May, whose tourists recently overtook Australians as the biggest force of foreigners coming for holiday in Bali, Nugroho shared on Tuesday.

Australians are still coming in strong though, as the second-biggest source of foreign tourists to Bali, followed by India, the UK, the US, South Korea, Taiwan, and Germany. However, numbers from Japan and Malaysia are down compared with the previous year.

While the massive amounts of Chinese tourists visiting Bali will certainly help the island meet its ambitious foreign arrivals target, observers fear Bali’s shift from an Aussie dominated market could have negative effects on Bali’s tourism industry.