Donning yellow “Bali” hats featuring a surfer as the last letter, Chinese tourists walked along the Indonesian backpacker hotspot’s pristine blue waters, forgetting three years of COVID-19 misery.
Exploring “turtle island,” taking day trips to neighboring Lombok and hitting Bali’s famed beaches, the world’s highest-spending tourists were back as the Lunar New Year holiday began and Beijing reopened to the world last month.
“I am especially happy to travel because, before the [COVID-19] pandemic, I was someone who liked to travel a lot, going all over to see the sights, experience different cultures and people,” said Li Zhao-long, a 28-year-old Internet company worker from Yunnan Province.
Photo: EPA
“Three years on, being able to come from China to Indonesia, I am extremely happy and overjoyed,” Li added.
Chinese vacationers have endured years of lockdowns and travel restrictions driven by China’s fervent pursuit of its “zero COVID-19” policy, followed by a sudden reopening and accompanying spike in infections.
A lucky few, armed with selfie-sticks and clad in tropical shirts and straw hats, are on long-awaited getaways to the “Island of Gods.”
In recent years, Chinese visitor numbers to Bali plunged after both countries closed their borders at the height of the pandemic.
However, Indonesian Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Sandiaga Uno said Jakarta was aiming for a massive rebound from those lows and estimated the country would welcome 253,000 Chinese tourists this year.
Balinese officials are even more bullish, hoping for the return of two-thirds of the 1.2 million Chinese visitors who came to the island before the pandemic — making them the second-biggest group of tourists behind Australians.
Although only several hundred Chinese tourists have arrived on once-weekly flights from Shenzhen, the Indonesian government said four more airlines have applied to fly regularly to Bali from China.
Officials are anticipating a return to normal Chinese tourist levels — which once amounted to one-fifth of all visitors — on the island by 2025.
The government also plans to ramp up its marketing of Bali as a paradise destination, Uno said.
Tourism operators are optimistic that the sector can get back on its feet with the help of a return to the booming Chinese custom of the past.
“We were suffering, honestly. I lost 10kg, so you can see how hard it was,” said Anita, a manager of a local Indonesian tour agency at Bali’s international airport. “But I am sure we are bouncing back.”
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