The latest travel figures have been released by Bali’s Ngurah Rai Immigration and the stats make for interesting reading.
Immigration traffic at Bali’s I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport in January 2025 showed an increase of 22% compared to the same period in 2024.
Speaking to reporters the Head of Immigration Information and Communication Technology, Ngurah Rai Immigration Office, Alexander Maxwell, revealed that a total, of 611,603 people arrived at Bali Airport in January 2025 while 632,833 people departed from the island.
In January the departure figures are almost always higher than the arrival figures as travelers return home from spending Christmas and New Year in the province.
Maxwell explained “Foreign tourists continue to dominate the number of arrivals, reaching 540,122 people (up 27 percent year-on-year). The arrival of Indonesian citizens also increased 30 percent year-on-year, with a total of 53,490 people, while flight crews were recorded at 17,991 people (20 percent increase year-on-year).”
Figures show that the most frequent international arrivals to Bali in January 2025 remains much the same as travel trends of the months and years gone by. The top 10 countries of origin of foreign tourists entering Bali in January 2025 were Australia with 139,577 people, China with 61,984 people, India with 36,514 people, South Korea with 35,172 people, and Russia with 26,794 people.
These top-ranking international tourists were followed by visitors from Malaysia, a total of 21,771 people, 20,569 people tourists visited from the UK, a total of 18,627 from the USA with travelers from Singapore taking up the ninth spoke with 15,942 visits, and tourists from Japan rounded off the top ten with 12,112 visits.
Additional travel data shared by the Governor of Bali, Wayan Koster, shows the impact the increasing number of tourists is having on Indonesia as a whole; even during the low season. Governor Koster revealed that Bali Province contributed IDR 107 trillion, the equivalent of 44% of foreign exchange to the national tourism sector in 2024.
During his speech this week Koster shared “Bali’s economy is highly dependent on the tourism sector. Therefore, in the future, a transformation must be carried out to organize the structure and fundamentals of the Balinese economy to be more balanced between the tourism sector and the non-tourism sector.”
He confirmed that tourism remains by far the most significant contributor to Bali’s economy, making up 66% of provincial income. Governor Koster shared his enthusiasm for the increasing number of international tourists that have been visiting the province over the last 12 months, though noted concerns that demand from the domestic travel market is not growing as he would like.
Governor Koster highlighted that domestic tourism figures have still not fully recovered from the pandemic. In 2024, only 9.4 million domestic tourists visited Bali, compared to 6.6 million international arrivals.
In the years leading up to the pandemic, Bali could easily welcome upwards of 10.5 million domestic tourists every year.
Governor Koster gave some insight as to why this might be. He told reporters “After further investigation, the national economy has not fully recovered and also national flight tickets are quite high. So, it is not possible for Indonesian people to fly to Bali for tourism.”
The question of domestic flight costs is one that many tourism leaders in Bali are concerned about right now.
The impact of high domestic flight costs affects not only Indonesian nationals but also international tourists. Indonesia is on a mission to encourage international tourists to explore as much of the archipelago as possible, using Bali as a launchpad.
High domestic flight costs are seriously off-putting to the average holidaymaker who is already working to achieve the most value for money possible during their Bali getaway.
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Specialmoments
Sunday 9th of March 2025
There seems to be continous mix information on international tourist arrival with statements earlier of 1 m arrivals in Jan and 1m in february, and now 629.000 for Jan 25.
Business is doing well in Bali when hotels are at 70% occupancy plus. Since janauary it has been 45% +/-and this month of march lower.
Marg
Sunday 9th of March 2025
Bali had better make the most of the increased tourism atm because if the Indonesian Govt bring in the daily tourist tax they are "talking" about, the next conversation will be "What can we do to bring the tourists back to Bali"