Wild Behaviour Over New Year’s Restarts Bali Bad Tourists Debate

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With the New Year officially over and hundreds of thousands of tourists now making their way home, it’s become apparent that it is time to reflect, once again, on the behavior of some tourists on the island.

In a debate that captivated the headlines in 2023, at the beginning of 2024, ‘bules’ behaving badly in Bali is the topic on everyone’s lips.

Footage is continuing to emerge online of tourists behaving badly in Bali over the New Year’s weekend.

As teams in Kuta, Legian, Seminyak, and Canggu comb the beach for debris left over by beach parties, and as undoubtedly many people on the island are recovering from a mighty hangover, locals, ex-pats, and even tourists themselves are discussing the unruly behavior of some tourists over the last few days. 

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Bad behavior has ranged from indecent exposure, public sex acts, letting off fireworks in public spaces, street brawling, and dangerous driving; there’s almost certainly more to come.

The bad behavior of a small minority of tourists in Bali was one of the hottest topics in Bali in 2023. Towards the latter part of the year, reports of tourists behaving badly had notably reduced.

Officials in Bali have put a series of mitigations in place to help create better public awareness about what is and isn’t expected of tourists in Bali, both culturally and legally. 

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These mitigations included a huge public awareness campaign and the development of the island’s list of do’s and don’ts.

These rules and guidelines were given to tourists on arrival, available to scan via a QR code, and printed on huge billboards in the island’s leading resort areas.

A dedicated Tourism Task Force was established by the Department of Immigration, as well as localized teams, to help keep a closer eye on resorts and attractions that were seeing the worst of the behavior. 

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One of the most shocking videos to have been posted online appeared to show two tourists engaging in the most intimate of relations outside the bathrooms of a popular beach club in Ungasan, close to Uluwatu.

The video shows the couple blurred, but with other partygoers having to dodge them as they make their way in and out of the bathrooms.

Videos taken by passing members of the public have been received by the Denpasar Police. Speaking to reporters following the video going viral the Head of the Criminal Investigations Unit at Denpasar Police, Mirza Gunawan, said “We have handed and and received the report from the beach club.”

He added, “We are still investigating and looking for the perpetrator who transmitted the video.” The issue at play now is not only that two tourists committed an unseemly act, but also that someone, somewhere circulated the footage online. 

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Indonesia has very strict pornography laws and anyone caught posting indecent images online can also be held criminally liable.

Earlier in the year at the height of the storm around tourists behaving badly officials reminded Indonesian citizens not to post videos and photos of tourists behaving badly online, but rather report incidences directly to the police. 

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Many local people in Bali, however, felt that the only way to get the attention of the authorities to deal with the issue at the scale that it requires was to make videos go viral so that officials would be forced to take action more quickly.

Other footage circulating online from the weekend shows tourist drivers getting road rage, and in one shocking video, shows a motorcycle driver attempting to ram through gridlock traffic in what appears to be the Canggu area.

Footage shows street brawls in Legian and tourists on Kuta Beach setting off fireworks in a large crowd of people. 

With campaigning for the upcoming general election underway, the conversation around bad tourists in Bali is going to be up for discussion until the problem is tackled.

Although there is a mass exodus of tourists underway, the question remains; does Bali need to do more to discourage unruly tourists from visiting the island?

What new measures will be introduced in 2024 to help encourage the so-called higher quality tourism ministers, tourism stakeholders and local communities want to see?