DENPASAR ~
For the first time ever, Chinese tourists to Bali surpassed the number of Australian visited the island. Based on the data of BPS (Statistic Bureu) of Bali, it occurred on February 2015.
According to Head of BPS Bali, this is quite interesting that this is the first time Chinese dominated tourist’s visit to Bali.
In February 2015, the total of tourists visited the island amounting 333.072 people. From the number, Chinese tourist is the highes with percentage of 27,71 percent, followed by Australian (21,04 percent), Japanese (6,69 percent), Malaysian (4,26 percent), and South Korean (3,95 percent).
Pasununan Siregar said that this trend was because many of Chinese tourists celebrated the Chinese New Year in Bali.
Beside in Bali, Chinese tourists also dominated the visit nationally in Indonesia in February 2015.
National BPS chief Suryaman said China accounted for 18.2 percent or 144,000 of the total number of 786,700 arrivals of foreign visitors to the country in February.
After China was Malaysia accounting for 12.43 percent or 97,800 arrivals, followed by Singapore 12.39 percent, Australia 10.43 percent and Japan 5.89 percent.
“Most of the Chinese visitors might want to expand business in Indonesia,” Suryamin told on Wednesday.
The number rose before the government announced visa free facility for 30 more countries including China to be effective in April, he said.
The number of tourists from China is expected to increase with the visa free facility for tourists from 30 more countries, he said.
The 30 countries added to 15 countries from which tourists are already given visa free facility by the government.
The policy is expected to double the number of arrivals of foreign tourist to 20 million in 2019 by the end of the present government term.
Increases of arrivals in February were recorded in a number of entrance gates including, but the highest increases were recorded at Sam Ratulangi airport of North Sulawesi up 212.70 percent; Jakarta’s Tanjung Priok seaport up by 43.46 percent and Tanjung Pinang seaport port of Riau Islands 30.84 percent.
Declines were recorded in 10 other entrance gates such as the airports of Sepinggan of East Kalimantan down by 35.08 percent and Minangkabau of West Sumatra by 0.45 percent.