Destinations known | ‘Stop going to Bali,’ pleads Australian official, as destinations push domestic tourism
- The coronavirus is keeping Chinese tourists and other international arrivals away from holiday hotspots
- From Australia to the Philippines, nations plan to promote wonders closer to home to help plug the economic gap
“Right now, the easiest thing we can do, the biggest thing we can do, is to get Western Australians to stop going to Bali,” Papalia told the paper. According to Tourism Western Australia statistics, in the year ending on September 2019, the state welcomed a record 987,700 international visitors. China was only the fifth-largest source market, accounting for 72,400 arrivals, but its citizens outspent all other nations, dropping A$347 million (US$230 million).
However, those numbers pale in comparison with domestic tourism data. In 2019, Western Australia’s almost 9 million intrastate visitors spent A$4.5 billion, averaging A$129 per person, per day. Papalia must be hoping that by convincing some of the 415,000 West Australians who visited Bali last year to holiday at home, the economic impact of the coronavirus – which has wreaked havoc on the tourism industry globally – will be minimised. And he is not alone in trying to drive domestic tourism.
Travel industry news website TTG Asia reported on March 6 that the Philippines had allocated US$8.2 million for a domestic travel campaign, while Malaysian citizens will be offered incentives including digital vouchers worth 100 ringgit (US$24) to use on domestic flights, trains and hotels, and personal income tax relief of up to 1,000 ringgit on expenditure related to domestic tourism. In Indonesia, more than 443 billion rupiah (US$31 million) will be granted as incentives to domestic tourists, according to The Jakarta Post.
