Earlier this year, authorities announced that they wanted to see 4.5 million international tourists visit the island by 2023.
Officials are optimistic that after just over half the year, the island will not only meet, but even exceed the tourism targets for this year.
According to travel data collected so far, Between January and July 2023, 2.9 million foreign visitors came to Bali.
The provincial government and the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy are sure that in view of this the island will exceed its targets by the end of the year.
Speaking to reporters, Ngurah Rai Sugito, the director of the TPI Special Immigration Class I Office, said: “Earlier, in 2022, the Bali Provincial Government targeted 1.5 million foreign tourist visits, but instead it exceeded 2, 1 million visits. We are therefore also optimistic that we can achieve this year’s target.”
The number of visitors coming to Bali is still lower than before the pandemic, when the island routinely received more than 6 million foreign visitors per year.
However, the numbers are rising quickly. Travelers and tourism companies look forward to the Christmas and New Year holidays, when the extended school holidays come to an end and Bali’s high season transitions into a quieter time.
Bali welcomed an additional million visitors for the 2022-2023 period of the New Year. The same is expected for this year.
According to Sandiaga Uno, Minister of Tourism and Creative Economies, Indonesia is on track to exceed its tourism targets by 20-25% by the end of 2023.
“We at the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy provide performance guidance to actors in the tourism and creative economy sectors,” he said.
“There have been two revisions [of national tourism data]. Now the latest figure is 8.5 million. It looks like we’re about 20-25%, so it looks like we’ll be 20-25% above the most optimistic target,” he said.
“If the optimistic target is 8.5 million, but we see that the number of foreign tourists will reach 10 million this year, God willing,” he concluded.
2023, Bali will continue to target 4.5 million visitors, accounting for more than half of all foreign visitors to the country.
Australia is still the country from which most visitors come to Bali. 652,461 Australian visitors have traveled to Bali so far this year.
More than 230,000 visitors from India visited Bali between January and July this year, indicating that the island is attracting a growing number of these visitors.
Due to more direct flights and an easing of strict Chinese Covid-19 regulations, Bali is experiencing an explosion in Chinese tourists.
In 2023, a total of 131,458 Chinese visitors came to Bali. Visitors from the United States and the United Kingdom rank fourth and fifth respectively. 129,137 visitors from the US and 126,822 visitors from the UK have visited Bali so far.
