Impact of the pandemic, the arrivals of foreign tourists to Bali plummeted to around 1 million last year, the lowest level in a decade, following global travel restrictions and subsequent border closures amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) said that last year’s total number reflects a staggering drop of 83 percent from 2019, with the large chunk of foreign tourist arrivals in 2020 taking place in the first three months of the year.
In March 2020, Indonesia reported its first COVID-19 cases. But at that time, the officials in Bali responded with an attempt to lessen the blow on the local economy and launched a tourism campaign called “We Love Bali,” claiming at the time that the province has yet to record any cases of the coronavirus.
But, in mid-March, a British woman became Indonesia’s first recorded COVID-19 death in Bali. And as result, the Southeast Asian country eventually closed its borders on April 2, 2020.
Since that time, Bali’s battered tourism industry has largely depended on domestic tourism has struggled to keep a lid on infections after reopening to domestic tourists at the end of July last year.
Until Feb. 1, the provincial COVID-19 tally stood at 26,557 cases.
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