Prodita Sabarini, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar
The number of European tourist visiting Bali might drop by 30 percent as a consequence of the European Commission banning Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe, a tourism association head says.
Bali chapter head of the Association of the Indonesian Tours and Travel Wayan Alloysius Purwa said that the ban on Indonesian airlines flying to Europe will affect the number of visitors coming to Bali and the rest of the country.
""Visitors from Europe will hesitate to come here because they would not trust local airlines to travel within Indonesia,"" he said.
Some 30 percent of European tourists visiting Bali take the ""Bali and Beyond"" package from travel agents. Using the Bali and Beyond package, tourists, after visiting Bali, continue their journey to Lombok, Papua, Yogyakarta or South Sulawesi's Makassar using local airlines.
According to data from the Bali Tourism Agency, as of May this year, some 148,980 visitors from Europe came to Bali. European tourists are dominated by visitors from Germany, with 24,120 people, the United Kingdom 23,822, France 20,433, and the Netherlands 18,870.
The European Commission announced last week that it planned to ban all 51 Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe after its air safety experts deemed them unsafe. The ban will become official when the commission endorses the experts' recommendation to ban the airlines on July 6 by adding them to the EU's list of unsafe airlines.
Aloysius urged the Transportation Ministry's Civil Aviation Directorate General to work according to international standards and make sure that the country's civil aviation was safe.
""Otherwise, the tourism sector will be at risk,"" he said.
The tourism sector in Bali had just started to recover from its downfall after two bombings in 2002 and 2005. However, with the looming ban on Indonesian airlines, it is once again in threat.
Aloysius said last week's announcement had already had an impact on Bali's tourism sector.
""Wholesale travel agents from Europe have asked their clients to cancel their travel here. Travel agents here have received e-mails and faxes from European wholesale travel agents to cancel flights using local airlines. A group of tourists had to take a bus from Surabaya to Bali,"" he said.
Tourists who insist on using local air flights are obliged to sign a statement that it was their own choice to take local flights. If anything happens to them while taking the local airlines here, they will not be covered by insurance.
Aloysius said that prospective visitors from Europe might call off their journey to Bali all together if they could not travel to other places in the country by air.
He said that travel agents here can change their choice of transportation for their clients by land or sea. However, it will be time-consuming and less convenient.
Bali Tourism Board Head Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya said that the ban would not only affect foreign tourists coming to Bali, but also local tourists.
Independent travelers and backpackers seem less concerned about the ban.
""It wouldn't stop me,"" said 18-year-old Rowland Hill from the United Kingdom.
Hill has been on the island for five days, after spending two weeks in Sumatra.
""I flew here using a local airline. Batavia air. It was absolutely fine. A normal, ordinary flight,"" he said.
Austrian Sarah Wieser, 23, also said that if the ban was implemented, she would still not hesitate to use local airlines within Indonesia.
""No, I think I'll still use local airlines. It's cheap,"" she said.
