Urip Hudiono, Jakarta – The October bombings in Bali have proved to be a severe blow to Indonesia's tourism sector, with the number of foreign visitors dropping by nearly 31 percent to 267,800 during the month, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported on Thursday.
According to the agency's latest tourism statistics, the number of overseas tourists to the popular resort island alone nearly halved to 86,800 visitors after rising by 2.79 percent to 168,200 in September.
"The bombing tragedy in Bali has seriously affected the number of foreign tourists coming into the country, apart from the fact that October is usually a low season for the tourism sector as well," BPS chief Choiril Maksum said.
Besides Indonesia's main tourist destination of Bali, all other destination cities in the country also saw declines in overseas travellers, including the capital Jakarta and Batam.
Only North Sulawesi's Manado managed to show a 6.67 percent rise in its foreign tourist arrivals, as 1,743 travellers were still willing to visit the province's popular offshore snorkeling attraction at Bunaken island.
The impacts on Indonesia's tourism sector from the avian flu outbreak here have yet to be seen, said to the report.
The total number of foreign tourists entering through the country's 13 main entry points as of October totaled 3,501,077 – down by 7.76 percent from 3,795,664 during the same period last year.
The government hoped to attract six million foreign visitors this year, taking in US$6 billion in revenues in the process. Last year, 5.3 million foreign tourists traveled to the archipelago, generating some US$5.3 billion in revenues.
Indonesia's tourism sector has been experiencing hard times since the Bali terrorist bombings of 2002, and similar bombings of the JW Marriott Hotel and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in the following years, all of which have served to scare of potential visitors.
The outbreaks of SARS and avian flu in the region at the same time, as well as the recent Asian tsunami disaster late last year, have only made things worse. And if all that was not enough, three bombs rocked Bali's two main tourist sites – Jimbaran and Kuta – in October, bringing back the horrific memories of the 2002 tragedy.
The latest slump in the number of foreign tourists could spell more bad news for the economy, with chief economics minister Aburizal Bakrie previously saying that Indonesia's gross domestic product (GDP) could drop by between 0.5 percent and 0.6 percent if the October bombings resulted in a 50 percent decrease in tourist arrivals in Bali and other destinations throughout the country up until the end of the year.
Tourism contributes some 6 percent of GDP and employs up to 8 percent of the total workforce, according to BPS data.
In a similar downward trend, the average length of stay of foreign tourists in star-rated hotels in 10 main tourist destinations in the country dropped to 2.03 days in September as compared to 2.15 days the previous month.