|
||||||||
  |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bali business faces ruin
By Lisa Barron, CNN Hong Kong
KUTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- The beaches of Bali are still enchanting, but in the aftermath of the weekend bombings, largely empty. And Bali's Ngura Rai airport, one of Southeast Asia's busiest, has tourists scrambling to leave, but very few are arriving. "The perception of Bali as a safe destination changed overnight, " Robert Van De Maas, general manager of the Grand Hyatt Bali, told CNN. "In the hotel, not a mass exodus, but a lot of cancellations for the coming weeks and days," he said. Business owner Kadek Wiranath laments: "Two days before my hotel was 98 percent full ... two days after it was 20 percent. So all my guests left because of panic." The panic is being felt not just by the holiday makers. Bali's business community is facing ruin. Through tourism, the island of 3 million people has become Indonesia's richest center outside of the capital, Jakarta. Out of 5 million visitors to Indonesia in 2001, 1.5 million went to Bali, making it the biggest single contributor to $5.2 billion generated by tourism. This year, while hotel occupancy rates in the republic have been at 40 to 45 percent, in Bali they had been running at 70 percent. "We had a temporary drop after 9/11, like pretty much every leisure destination did," Paul Kirwin, president of the Carlson Hotels group, which owns the Bali Radisson, said. "But we recovered pretty quickly in Bali and Bali's business has been pretty strong for the past year. " Nobody on the islands is expecting the situation to return to those levels anytime soon. (Some hardy tourists remain) Before the tragedy, Bali received the biggest number of its tourists from Japan, Australia, the U.S. and the United Kingdom. All of those nations have now issued travel warnings for Indonesia, and Bali in particular. In Asian cities such as Hong Kong, travel agents say their clients are opting to go to other beach resorts or to just stay home. "They feel it's not necessary for a leisure traveler. They feel it's not necessary to go. That's why they will cancel," Eric Chan, of Hong Kong's Wheelock Travel, said. Kirwin predicts it will be a few years before Bali gets back to where it was. "And to some degree I think it will have to do with how the Indonesian government deals with the issue of terrorism," he said. Meanwhile, Bali business people say they will start trying to resell the island to the rest of the world. But it will be hard work, especially when the only increase in airline traffic these days is extra flights to get tourists off the island.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
