Already looking forward to a winter holiday in the sun? Indonesia could soon be an easier destination to reach, as the government there plans to abolish holiday visa requirements for citizens of 20 countries.
“We are proposing visa-free access for tourists from countries that have the greatest economic impact,” Sandiaga Onethe country’s minister of tourism.
According to the state news agency Antara, the European countries on the list are France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom. The agency said the relaxation would come into effect in October.
Australia, China, India, Japan and the US are among the countries whose passport holders will have easier access to the 5,000-kilometre-wide, 13,000-island Indonesian archipelago.
These islands include Bali, popular for its beaches and party scene, and Komodo, home to the fearsome eponymous lizard. Also popular is the world’s most populous island, Java, with 150 million people and attractions such as Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist temple, and Jakarta, the sprawling capital.
The Indonesian government is targeting 17 million tourists in 2024, with 5.2 million recorded in the first 5 months of the year. If such an influx is achieved, it would surpass the number of visitors before the Covid lockdown in 2019.
Of the 16.1 million foreign visitors that year, more than a third arrived in Bali. There, as with major European attractions such as Amsterdam, Barcelona and Venice, there have been complaints about so-called overtourism.
In response, Bali’s local authorities imposed a tourist tax earlier this year. There have long been calls for tougher penalties for what Antara calls “problem foreigners,” a term coined after a British national was arrested last month for stealing a truck and crashing into motorists while allegedly “under the influence.”
In April, Indonesian airline TransNusa added routes from Bali to Manado, a dive site on the island of Sulawesi, east of Borneo and south of the Philippines, and from Manado to Ambon, the regional capital of what were once known in Europe as the “Spice Islands.”
The government wants to make travel easier in the vast archipelago and attract more tourists to areas other than Bali and Java.
