All over the world, tourism has ground to a halt because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced countries and tourist destinations to close their borders and limit the number of visitors, respectively, to prevent overcrowding and implement physical distancing.
Indonesia has not been immune to this problem, especially Bali, the country’s world-famous tourist destination. From March to July, Bali recorded an economic loss amounting to Rp 48.6 trillion (US$3.4 billion) as a result of its tourist sector slowdown.
This marks the biggest economic loss that Bali has ever recorded, bigger even than the economic devastation that it faced in 1998, when it was hit by the Southeast Asian economic contraction. The pandemic’s economic effect on Bali is even greater than the financial contraction brought about by the Bali bombings in 2002.