Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
There are also concerns about
HIV/AIDS
(Bali has among the highest rates in Indonesia)
and
drug addiction
. ECPAT (
ecpat.net
), a global NGO working to abolish the commercial
sexual exploitation of children, has reported that Bali has a reputation as a
child sex tourism
destination and is also a major destination for trafficked girls and women.
However, many of the problems are those of any developing country and, while many ar-
ticulate the negative side of tourism, many of the people in the villages are keen to develop
tourist facilities that will bring visitors, and their money, to them.
The situation in Lombok
A trickle of tourists started arriving on
Lombok
in the 1980s and local people set up small
losmen around Senggigi, the Gili Islands and, later, around Kuta. By 1989, there were over
120,000 visitors annually, and though the figures are now over 600,000, that's still less than
a third of the number of visitors to Bali.
Lombok's fortunes are closely tied with those of Bali, and visitor numbers plummeted fol-
lowing the 2002 and 2005 bombings. As on Bali, however, Lombok tourism has since re-
vived. Indeed, one tiny, atypical corner - the
Gili Islands
- is booming, raising widespread
concern about the social and environmental sustainability of unregulated development on its
tiny land mass. Islanders and expats are actively addressing this under the auspices of the
impressive
Gili Eco Trust
,
and the island has become the subject of a surprising number of
academic studies on island tourism.
To date the issue of sustainable tourism on “mainland” Lombok hasn't been so pressing,
not least because there's been no strong
political appetite
for tourism on Lombok. Many Sa-
sak people consider the gap between Muslim morals and those of their Western visitors to
be unacceptably wide, while the tourist job market has been increasingly dominated by the
better-qualified Balinese. Sasak people in particular, forced out of education due to poverty,
have little chance of landing anything but the most menial work. However, the view at the top
has now changed markedly: the current provincial governor of Nusa Tenggara Barat, Guru
Bajang, is widely seen as pro tourism.
The opening of Lombok's new
international airport
near Kuta in south Lombok was an-
other significant step, with the aim of bringing more direct international flights to Lombok -
and more investment. It is the latter, of course, that concerns local people, not least because it
has already led to the earmarking of a vast swathe of beachfront land around Kuta for what's
billed as a luxury development, perhaps in the style of Bali's Nusa Dua. On the plus side,
the airport has resulted in the much-needed upgrading of roads across south Lombok and, if
tourist development is carefully and inclusively managed, could boost the economy of one of
Lombok's poorest regions.
