Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE IMPACT OF TOURISM
Debates about the effects of tourism on Bali and Lombok have been running for dec-
ades. In the 1920s and 1930s, soon after the first tourists arrived, some local comment-
ators decried visitors who took photographs of bare-breasted Balinese women and dam-
aged island roads with their motor cars. In fact nostalgia for a more peaceful Bali is
even older; a Javanese mystic who visited Bali in 1500 complained that it was no longer
quiet enough to practise meditation.
The history of tourism
Tourism
in Bali effectively started in 1924 when KPM, the Royal Packet Navigation Com-
pany, established weekly
steamship services
connecting Bali with Batavia (Jakarta), Singa-
pore, Semarang, Surabaya and Makassar, with visitors to Bali using the government rest-
houses dotted around the island. Bali received 213 visitors that year, and the numbers, with a
few blips, have continued to rise ever since; the island received 3.27 million foreign visitors
in 2013, plus similar numbers of Indonesian tourists.
In 1928, KPM opened the island's first
hotel
, the
Bali Hotel
in Denpasar; an air link to
Surabaya began 1933; a daily ferry between Java and Gilimanuk launched in 1934; and the
airport at Tuban opened in 1938. By the 1930s several thousand tourists were visiting Bali
each year, some of whom settled there. Artists, such as Walter Spies and Miguel Covarrubias,
and anthropologists, including Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, focused on the artistic
and religious aspects of Balinese life and, through their writing, painting, photography and
filmmaking enhanced the worldwide image of Bali as a paradise.
The Japanese occupation during World War II, followed by the struggle for independence,
halted the tourist influx, but under President Sukarno and later President Suharto, the
promo-
tion of tourism
became official government policy. The inauguration of
Ngurah Rai Air-
port
in 1969 marked the beginning of mass tourism; it is now Indonesia's second-busiest air-
port after Jakarta.
In 1972, the government-owned
Bali Tourist Development Corporation (BTDC)
was
formed and built the resort of
Nusa Dua
, aimed at closeting high-spending tourists away
from local people. However, the tourists didn't all stay hidden away. By the 1970s
Kuta
had
become a surfing hub and local villagers turned their homes into small hotels. Not everyone
was happy; the surfers were labelled as hippies, drug addicts and practitioners of free love,
and the negative impact of tourism on the island was contemplated fearfully.
There was also concern about the
over-commercialization
of arts and culture for tourist
consumption. Dances, for example, were shortened and changed to suit tourist tastes; it was
a rare visitor who could enjoy a five-hour performance. In the 1970s the annual Bali Arts
Festival was inaugurated to encourage the Balinese to appreciate their own culture.
