Bali to remain closed for rest of 2020

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Bali, the Indonesian tourism hotspot island, will remain closed to foreign visitors for the rest of 2020 after authorities postponed a plan to welcome back international tourists from Sept. 11 as the coronavirus continues to spread.

“The Indonesian government couldn’t reopen its doors to foreign travellers until the end of 2020 as we remain a red zone,” Bali Governor Wayan Koster said in a statement. “The situation is not conducive to allowing foreign tourists to come to Indonesia, including Bali.”

After some success in containment early on, Bali’s infection rate jumped in June as migrant workers returned home and testing increased. The island had 4,576 confirmed cases as of Monday and 52 deaths, while Indonesia as a whole has more than 155,000 confirmed cases and 6,759 deaths, according to government data.

Bali has been open to local travellers since the end of July, and as many as 2,500 people have been arriving through its airport every day without causing a spike in infections, Koster said. The local government will focus on increasing the number of domestic visitors to help the tourism industry and economy recover, he said.

Over six million foreign tourists visited Bali last year, accounting for more than a third of Indonesia’s total. The government warned in April that the pandemic could wipe out more than $10 billion of Indonesia’s tourism revenue this year, a forecast that is likely to worsen now because it assumed there would be some recovery in the second half.

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