Bali is now open to foreign travelers from 19 countries. However, the return of tourism is starting slowly, as there are still no direct flights to the island a week after the Indonesian authorities opened the island.
“We have authorized 19 countries to travel to Bali and the Riau Islands,” Maritime and Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Panjitan said last Wednesday, according to CNN. These countries, selected for their low rate of positive response to COVID-19, are Bahrain, China, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates. All foreign travelers must be fully vaccinated, have insurance covering coronavirus treatment, be tested negative and quarantined at their own expense within five days of arrival.
Although the international airport technically opened on October 14, there were no international flights scheduled at the time, AP reported. And a week later, the situation has not changed. There are no direct flights on the airport’s arrival schedule, and searches on Skyscanner and Google show no direct flights from several authorized countries in the next few days. However, tourism officials expect direct international flights to resume in late October or early November.
“Things like this take time. These countries and visitors take time,” Bali Governor Y Wayan Koster said, according to Reuters. “We hope to see inbound flights, whether charter or commercial, by the end of October, as signs of a recovery in tourism in Bali.”
Before the pandemic, Bali was visited annually by about 6 million people; that number dropped to 1 million last year, according to AP. Coronavirus cases have skyrocketed in Indonesia this summer, peaking in July, but have been steadily declining since early September. As of October 21, 32% of the country’s population was fully vaccinated.