Bali welcomes foreign tourists from all over the world | Details inside

In an attempt to boost Bali’s battered tourism industry, the government has decided to reopen tourism to all countries.

Great news for travelers! Bali resumed direct international flights for the first time in two years as Indonesia opened up its resort island to foreign tourists from around the world, but a mandatory quarantine remained for all visitors.

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Officials had said in October that Bali would welcome foreign visitors from 19 countries that met World Health Organization criteria such as COVID-19 cases being contained. But there were no direct international flights to Bali until Thursday, when Garuda Indonesia operated its first international flight from Tokyo in two years.

Taufan Yudhistira, public relations manager at Ngurah Rai International Airport, said Singapore Airlines will start regular direct flights to and from Denpasar, Bali starting from February 16.

Fully vaccinated travelers will need to quarantine for five days in a hotel or on a liveaboard certified by the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, and travelers who have received a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine must quarantine for seven days.

On Thursday, Indonesia reported 27,197 new coronavirus infections and 38 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total number of cases in the country has surpassed 4.4 million since the start of the pandemic.

The government’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investments, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, said the latest surge in cases in the country was caused by the highly transmissible omicron variant and was concentrated in Jakarta, but Java has seen a surge in recent days. Minister in charge of Java and Bali’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Panchaitan said the purpose of quarantining foreign arrivals is to prevent further spread of the virus.

Before the pandemic, Bali’s airport handled more than 200 international flights in 2019, with at least 1 million passengers a day. The island shut down international flights after COVID-19 hit the world’s fourth most populous country in 2020.

Tourism is the main source of income for Bali, a predominantly Muslim archipelago of more than 4 million people who are mainly Hindu. Two decades ago, tourist areas in Bali were scared away by deadly terror attacks against foreigners, leaving tourists scarce, but the island has worked hard to overcome that image.

Panchaitan said that Bali’s reopening to tourists from all over the world will help boost the island’s economy, which has been severely affected by the epidemic.

Tourism and Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno said the reopening would also serve as a “trial” as the government prepares to host a G-20 event in Bali later this year.

The meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors was originally scheduled to take place in Bali in mid-February but has been moved to Jakarta due to a surge in COVID-19 cases. Some attendees will join the event virtually.

(AP) (AP staff writer Edna Tarrigan in Jakarta, Indonesia contributed to this report)