Archive 'Tourism'
by Putra - 20 Nov 2006 @ 11:54 am · Category Tourism
The Balinese have been more exposed to international tourists and generally speak more english than people in other parts of the Indonesian archipelago. They have managed to preserve their culture despite overwhelming foreign influences brought to the region by an ever increasing number of tourists.
Bali is the Hawaii of the East. Of the four million tourists who came to Indonesia in 1994, more than 750,000 flew straight to Bali. The number of foreign and domestic tourists arriving in Bali is now approaching 1.5 million a year. The growth in visitors, which stands at about 10% per year, is expected to continue through the late 1990s. Bali already has a full half of all the hotels in Indonesia.
Bali makes a valuable study in the effects of mass tourism on the social and cultural patterns of an indigenous population. Every generation of visitors arrives to “discover” Bali, pronounce it a paradise, and then once home mourns that it’s lost forever. Visitors are so enthralled with the legend surrounding Bali; many arrive thinking that Indonesia is a part of Bali rather than the other way round.
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by Putra - 13 Nov 2006 @ 7:45 am · Category Tourism
It’s estimated that as much as 80% of all tourists receipts end up outside Bali. This revenue leakage must be measured against the much-touted claims of tourism generating huge foreign exchange earnings. Not surprisingly, the estimated $200 million brought in each year by tourists has not been entirely beneficial for the Balinese economy.
Actual improvement in the standard of living is significant but not dramatic. Much of the population is poor, in many cases desperately poor. The minimum wage is about Rp30,000 per month. Lowly hotel workers earn only Rp2000 per day, receive free lodging, and if they’re lucky get one meal a day. Assistant carpenters earn about Rp5000 per day; young workers in the garment industry sew beads or sequins on clothing for as little as Rp600 per day.
The vast majority of Balinese lives in villages and does not directly benefit from foreign-exchange earnings. The advent of tourism has widened the gap between rich and poor. A UNESCO study demonstrated that those who benefit most from tourism are directly engaged in the industry-hotel and art shop owners and employees, guides, drivers, hotel workers, musicians, performers.
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by Putra - 25 Jul 2006 @ 5:43 am · Category Tourism
The impact of tourism on Bali’s environment has been horrendous. The island’s affluence has given way to ugly urban sprawl in the capital of Denpasar. Even more serious is the environmental damaged caused by the plundering of offshore reefs for coral used in the construction boom of the 1980s. Live reefs are threatened by sewage, runoff and silt. Over 1,000 hectares of agricultural land are lost every year to art shops, hotels, and housing estates. Megaresorts displace traditional landowners and tenants.
The southern region is woefully lacking in the infrastructure necessary to sustain a burgeoning population. The water table is sinking, and water is already in short supply. Electricity is barely adequate. The problem of waste disposal has reached crisis proportions. No one seems to know what to do with all the ’sampah’ (garbage) as the volume of non-organic, non-biodegradable waste grows. Profits made from tourists may soon be canceled out by the cost of maintaining the environment.
Inflation is inexorably driving up the price of land. In 1993, a restaurant owner on the Bypass paid Rp55 million for 10 are just to increase the bus parking space for her restaurant. Land in Kuta now runs Rp100,000 million per are. The Balinese themselves cannot raise the necessary capital to open big enterprises. Jakarta-based businessmen and women in partnership with transnational corporations now dominate Bali’s real estate market. In 1995 The West Australian published a list of the major investors in five-star hotels and golf courses in Bali, revealing that numerous high-end properties are owned by President Suharto’s children.
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by Putra - 24 Jul 2006 @ 5:40 am · Category Tourism
Tourism is Bali’s biggest source of hard currency. The foreign currency brought in by tourists improves Indonesia’s balance of payments, helping to correct the structural imbalance of trade between the developing and developed nations.
The government recognizes that tourism is Bali’s best hope for raising living standards and bringing jobs and prosperity. Tourism has meant that many people are now able to send their children to school. A senior high school diploma (SMA) is required to enter a tourism school, and all the big hotels only want students from these schools. Work in a hotel in almost any capacity is considered an excellent job. Tour guides and drivers can do even better. They can make between US$400 and $500 per month, compared with a monthly salary of US$100-150 for Balinese high school teachers.
Many Balinese view tourism as a cure for overcrowding and poverty. Tourism provides extra income for the landless as well as for those put out of work by the “green revolution,” the introduction of machines, and shrinking land holdings. Even backpackers leave money. Their priority is to travel cheaply, but the very length of their stay-often up to the two-month limit-means they usually drop more cash than the wealthy tourists who spend but four days on the island.
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by Putra - 22 Jul 2006 @ 5:39 am · Category Place of Interest, Tourism
In 1974 the government concocted the Nusa Dua Experiment, calling for the construction of luxury hotels along the East Coast of the arid, thinly populated Bukit Peninsula. By offering foreign investors 50-year leases with maximum incentives and tax holidays, it was hoped the Nusa Dua resort would accommodate and contain the surge in visitors. Nusa Dua constituted a major shift to elite tourism, planned as an isolated, self-contained ghetto that would allow visitors the experience of Bali but keep their interactions with the natives to a minimum.
Because relatively few of the island’s 2.7 million people live near the sea and few tourists want to stay anywhere else, the plan looked really good on paper. But the resort was very slow to develop. It was only in the 1980s that Nusa Dua finally came into its own; it wasn’t until late in the decade those tourist projections were met.
In this Mediterranean-style, self-contained hotel resorts tourists can sun their near-naked bodies on white sandy beaches without scandalizing anyone and watch abbreviated pseudo-events performed in expensive hotel foyers. Those with a spirit of adventure may day-trip around the island in air-conditioned buses to pre-selected villages and tourist sites, leaving untainted the rest of Eden.
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by Putra - 20 Jul 2006 @ 5:30 am · Category Tourism
Ever since two members of van de Houtman’s crew jumped ship in 1597, Bali’s utterly unique, highly developed culture has been endlessly fascinating to Westerners, the paradigm of tropical beauty and exotic adventure.
The Dutch steamship line KPM began calling at the northern Bali port of Buleleng in the late 19th century, though its cargoes consisted mostly of pigs, copra, and coffee rather than tourists. Following quickly upon the ‘puputan’ of 1906, Bali’s first tourist was Dutch parliamentarian H. Van Kol, who reached Bali at his own expense and toured the island with a senior Dutch official. Upon his return to Holland, he wrote of his travels on Bali in a book called Out of Our Colonies. By 1914 KPM was producing brochures rhapsodizing about Bali as an enchanted Garden of Eden.
Next came a classic book of photos of wild dances, corrupt kings, and bare bodies, published in Germany in 1921 by Gregor Krause. As early as the 1920s, the island drew a steady stream of affluent, intrepid, genteel world vagabonds; these visitors perplexed the Dutch, who looked upon their tour of duty on quiet Bali as a boresome necessity.
In the 1930s the documentaries Isle of the Demons and Goona-Goona depicted Bali as a paradise on earth.
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