Indonesia to start work on £150m 'rich guy' cruise terminal as it seeks '10 new Balis'
Indonesia is weeks away from dredging a bay on Bali to build a £150 million port facility in an effort to attract "the rich guy".
After five years of planning, work is expected to begin next month. The resulting marina and cruise terminal on Bali’s southern tip will become the nation’s largest port, able to accommodate three cruise ships at once, each carrying as many as 5,000 passengers. Ari Askhara, chief executive of state-owned Pelindo III, the company behind the development, said he wants to lure luxury travellers from the yacht clubs of Singapore.
“At the moment people have Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai [to sail to] but Bali is very rare because the infrastructure is not there yet,” he told AAP, adding that he wanted to invite “the rich guy” to Bali.
The exclusive One°15 marina, membership of which costs $60,888 (£47,230), has been cited as inspiration for the development at Benoa Port. The Singapore club boasts 3,850 members - a target it met in 2007; it has since closed to membership applications - who enjoy an “unprecedented lifestyle destination” in the shape of pools, spa, restaurants, tennis courts, “swanky boathouses”, and luxury accommodation.
It is this clientele that tourism bosses on Bali are keen to attract. Indonesian tourism minister Arief Yahya says that the cruise industry presents an untapped market for Bali. He said though more than 3 million tourists travel via cruise ship every year in the East Asia-Australia region, Indonesia only welcomes 200,000.
“With the availability of this new terminal facility, it is hoped that the target of 500,000 foreign tourist arrivals from cruise ships for the year of 2019 can be achieved,” he said.
Plans are also afoot to develop a cruise terminal at Celukan Bawang, to the north of Bali, capable of accommodating seven ships at a time, each with a capacity of up to 1,000 passengers.
The new facilities are part of Indonesia’s drive to increase its annual visitor numbers from 11.4 million last year to 15 million in 2017 and 20 million by 2019. But at what cost?
The problems associated with vast numbers of cruise passengers flooding ports and cities has been well documented in Europe over the last 12 months, with Barcelona, Venice and Dubrovnik all struggling to balance the desire for tourism with the necessity of protecting local cultures and ways of life.
Chairman of the Bali Tourism Board, Isa Bagus Partha Adnyana, told Telegraph Travel an environmental impact study had been undertaken.
“We are supporting the establishment of the Benoa Port,” Adnyana said. “Benoa is located in Bali which perfectly acts as a hub as Bali sits in the middle of Indonesia and also being the central of tourism activity.”
He welcomed the increasing number of cruise visitors and potential to benefit other ports in the Indonesian archipelago.
But Ida Bagus Surakusuma, former chairman of the Bali Chapter of the Indonesian Congress and Convention Association (INCCA), said the government needs to be “cautious” in its pursuit of visitor targets.
“Which passengers are the target? Back then, cruise ships were definitely rich people,” he said. “But now people coming to Asia, including Bali, are second-class passengers. Rich people tend to choose the Mediterranean or Europe.”
Last month, Indonesia announced Australia was helping fund the creation of “10 new Balis” to help spread tourism investment across the country’s 34 provinces to the tune of $850million (£660m).
The mooted destinations include Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, and Yogyakarta in Java.
