Where do Bali’s least popular tourists come from? Indonesian locals have a reputation that is hard to shake
It is hard being an Indonesian visitor on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali, where motorcycle rental businesses will tell you there are no rides left (there are) and restaurants will say they are full (but let in groups of foreigners)
Putu Sudiwiadnya smiles when asked where most of the customers of his motorcycle rental business come from. “Nearly 100 per cent are foreigners,” he says.
Putu opened his business in Ubud, on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali, in 2001. The jolly 40-year-old says the town, Bali’s cultural heart, was a relatively sleepy one at the time, but now attracts millions of tourists a year.
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Indonesia welcomed about 14 million foreign visitors in 2017, with some 40 per cent travelling to Bali, according to official statistics. The island also attracts roughly the same number of holidaymakers from other parts of Indonesia. But Putu would rather rent to visitors from any country other than his own.
“I’m not the only one,” he says. “When local tourists ask, we tell them that all the bikes are rented out.”
Putu’s candidness may come as a surprise, but Indonesian tourists visiting Bali have long griped about preferential treatment given to foreign holidaymakers.
Ndari Utoyo, a senior vice-president of operations at a technology company based in Jakarta, had a similar experience when he was refused entry to a club at a resort village in Bali.
