UK Travel Warning Lifted
The UK Foreign Office has finally revised its Travel Advice for Indonesia and is no longer suggesting against non-essential travel to the province. The decision has come about due to a complete review of the Travel Advisory system and it has now been decided to only initiate advice when there is specific intelligence of a threat in a particular country. This way they hope when they issue a travel advisory people might take it more credibly and take heed of the advice.
The news has been met with relief from everyone in Bali, who for the past 21 months have been battling to get Bali back on its' feet following the tragic events of October 2002. The UK travel warning had a greater impact on the UK Travellers to Bali than other countries that carried a travel warning since there were also insurance implications for those travellers which discouraged them from travelling.
With the lifting of the advice by the UK Foreign Office it is now hoped that other countries with similar advise will follow suit; namely Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
The UK Market historically has maintained 4th position in terms of total arrivals to Bali behind Australia, Japan and Taiwan. In 2003 due to the travel advisories tourists from the UK to Bali dropped 48% on 2002 and dropped to 7th position in the rankings.
In June 2004, the preliminary statistics show that it was a record month in history in terms of total arrivals to Bali. Bali is recovering and the focus now is to get back to our original market mix of longer staying tourists to hasten the recovery of the overall economy in Bali.
Good news. Lets hope Australia follows