Up until the COVID-19 border closures, the small Indonesian island destination of Bali received approximately 17,000 foreign tourists a day. [1] Even with setbacks including 2 high profile terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2005, and the Boxing day Tsunami in 2004, Bali has consistently continued to attract visitors on mass (around 3.5 million international tourists and 7.3 million domestic tourists in 2018) making the industry’s estimated contribution to the island’s overall economy somewhere around 60-70%. [2] Governmental changes to provide 84 countries with Visa-free entry, which included their largest tourist market, Australia, was expected to create an upsurge in visitation in the years that followed. [3]
Khamdevi & Bott observes that in the period of 1997-2011, around 436 hectares of agricultural land were converted into use for other industry sectors per year (such as buildings, villas, night clubs and hotels), causing tensions around the transfer of local land ownership to multi-national and foreign capital investors. [4] While the unrestrained and rapid expansion of mass tourism in Bali contributes significantly to the economy, it is estimated that 85% of its tourism is in the hands of non-Balinese ownership [5] and with it, the industry brings a range of negative impacts. [6]
With Bali also known as ‘the island of the gods,’ it’s population consists of a community that is of a Hindu majority. [7] Khamdevi & Bott argues that tourism development “often interfere[s] in religious ceremonies and processions” such as disrupting access to beach areas and other places where traditional celebrations (such as Nyepi day) take place. [8] In Chong’s 2018 study of local community perspectives on mass tourism, respondents raised several concerns including tourist misbehaviour in both the forms of public drunkeness and cultural ignorance, cultural dilution, issues with traffic congestion and problems with waste management. [9]
While in Bali for the first time in 2015, the negative effects of overtourism was palpable. The overdevelopment of western style resort accommodation as identified in Chong’s study [10] was visible in both the construction of another resort immediately outside my room window; in the unexpected upgrade to a room with a private pool, the significant price-cutting available on my accommodation at the time of booking and the general lack of guests in the surrounding rooms – despite the busy streets full of litter, air pollution, Westerners and traffic chaos.
With Laos as my only other point of South-East Asian comparison, the service providers I met felt worn out by tourism. Be it the taxi drivers quoting higher and higher prices for the same trip or the money exchanger who ‘accidentally’ short-changed me the equivalent $50 Australian dollars knowing that many foreigners get bamboozled by the number of 000s attached to their currency, I couldn’t blame them for attempting to extract everything they could in payment for the unfavourable environmental and societal changes my tourism was complicit in creating.
And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
With the closure of Bali to international tourists, the daily numbers of foreign travellers dropped close to 0, closing 96% of hotels and leaving an estimated 1.4 million people without work, at a cost of around USD $9 billion. [11] This equates to approximately 28.9% of Indonesia’s national economy. [12]
With so many livelihoods lost, food security immediately became an issue with the emergence of a ‘COVID-poor’ appearing in urban areas, further exaggerating the existing issues of malnutrition in the island’s east. [13] Many informal workers returned to hometowns to work in the agricultural sector, “where wages as low as $4 a day, or the payment of only one bucket of unhulled rice” is common. [14] Others have returned to the pre-tourism tradition of seaweed farming, a physically taxing industry with earnings of around $35-$50 a month. [15]
With much of the population eager to see the economic benefits of tourism return [16] for some the de-urbanisation of Bali has resulted in a boost to agricultural land in the north that had gone fallow because of the lack of available workers. [17] For one farmer, farming was a more sustainable enterprise than tourism, stating that ‘tourism is fragile and we have gone too far.” [18]
The pause in tourism has given many people in Bali the opportunity to reassess their relationship to tourism. In an Indonesia Tourist Forum teleconference, Bali’s governor, I Wayan Koster asserted that, “in the context of Bali, I don’t call it the new normal, I call it the new era of Bali, which will change the paradigm of tourism in the future,” and stating that diversifying the economy by developing other sectors, such as agricultural exports, would be a government priority. [19] In Winterflood’s article, locals wanted to see a return to ‘quality tourism’ where guests “participate in preserving the sustainability of nature, culture and traditions” and to prevent returning to the pre-pandemic conditions in which Bali predominately served as the foreign tourist’s theme park, catered to their entertainment. [20]
While tourism is a key component in Bali’s economy that in post-pandemic conditions is likely to return with significant force, the COVID-19 pause provides time for Balinese communities and it’s governance structures to prepare and mediate this return on their terms, with the added benefit of hindsight. It’s an opening to examine past overtourism and to identify opportunities for ‘sustainable tourism degrowth’ where “prioritising the rights of local communities, above the rights of tourists for holidays and the rights of tourism corporates to make profits” [21] becomes commonplace.
/REFERENCES
1 Fernandez, J. & Barker, A. (2020, April 23). COVID-19 pandemic : Tourism collapse: Tourism in Bali has been devastated. In ABC News NSW.
2 Sobocinska, A. (2011). Innocence lost and paradise regained Tourism to Bali and Australian perceptions of Asia. History Australia, 8(2), 199–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2011.11668380
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Chong, K. (2020). The side effects of mass tourism: the voices of Bali islanders. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 25(2), 157–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/10941665.2019.1683591
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Khamdevi, M., & Bott, H. (2018). Rethinking tourism: Bali’s failure. IOP Conference Series. Earth and Environmental Science, 126(1), 12171–. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/126/1/012171
11 Yuniti, I. G. A., Sasmita, N., Komara, L. P., Purba, J. P., & Pandawani, N. (2020). The Impact of Covid-19 on Community Life in the Province of Bali, Indonesia. International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation. 24(10). 1918-1929. 10.37200/IJPR/V24I10/PR300214.
12 Handayani, F., Sylvina, V. & Lestari, A. (2021). Toward New Normal: Bali Tourism Goes Extra Mile. IOP Conference Series. Earth and Environmental Science, 704(1). https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/704/1/012025
13 Firdaus, F. (2020, August 2). Bali is not only bout tourism: COVID-19 prompts rethink for island’s residents. The Guardian, retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/aug/01/bali-is-not-only-about-tourism-covid-19-prompts-rethink-for-islands-residents
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Aljazeera (2020, December 4). Bali struggles with ‘COVID-poor’ as Indonesian cases hit record, retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/4/covid-poor-emerge-in-bali-as-indonesian-cases-hit-new-records
15 Davis, M. (2021, March 21). The year Bali tourism stopped. Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-09/bali-return-of-seaweed-farming-ceningan-lembongan-penida-covid/13202170
16 Pietersz, E., Washington, J. & Husibuan, S. (2021, April 2). In tourist-free Bali, artists persevere through ‘darkest moment’, Aljazeera, retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/2/in-tourist-free-baliartists-persevere-through-darkest-moment
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Laula, N. & Paddock, R. (2020, July 20). With Tourism Gone, Bali Workers Return to Farms and Fishing, The New York Times, retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/world/asia/bali-tourism-coronavirus.html
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Winterflood, J. (2020, June 10). Post-Pandemic, Will Bali Rethink Tourism? The Diplomat, retrieved from https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/post-pandemic-will-bali-rethink-tourism/
21 Higgins-Desbiolles, F., Carnicelli, S., Krolikowski, C., Wijesinghe, G., & Boluk, K. (2019). Degrowing tourism: rethinking tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(12), 1926–1944. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2019.1601732