Like eager lice on a ripe scalp, tourists have become a much-reviled feature of various economies. While cash and contributions come in their wake, such an industry depletes, drains and pollutes the very site it idealises. International tourism does its bit to bloat global greenhouse gas emissions, with transportation constituting the lion’s share. All this has engendered yet another addition to the uninspiring jargon of tourism research: overtourism.
Overtourism can be seen as the apotheosis of the Irridex Index (irritation index), an unremarkable idea formulated by George Doxey in 1975 to describe the way attitudes in a local community evolve to tourism and tourists as numbers increase. It proposes four stages: euphoria, apathy, annoyance and antagonism.
The year has been busy for the antagonists. In Venice, a daily €5 charge was introduced as part of a trial for 29 peak days concluding on July 14, causing its fair share of confusion, even anger to freedom of movement advocates. Earlier that month, Barcelona residents protested against tourists luxuriating on restaurant terraces, squirting them with water to the chants of “Tourists go home!” As far back as 2017, the Catalan capital featured such agitated themes as: “Your luxury trip is my daily misery.”
Of late, tourists to Bali, so longed for during the pandemic, have become a lamented scourge. There are both boon and bane, blessing and curse, but the number of tourists flocking and mobbing the Indonesian island has officials worried. In 2023, 5,273,258 foreign visitors made Bali their destination, with 439,438 visitors arriving per month.
At the height of the COVID pandemic, pundits and policy makers began wondering whether the more detrimental effects of international tourism might be addressed by adopting more sustainable models. Those airy propositions proved short lived before the returns of convenience.
That Bali has been the subject of use, misuse and traditional exploitation is much in keeping with its imperial colonial history. Cornelius de Houtman called the island Jonck Hollandt (New Holland) on his arrival in 1597, an approach that set matters in predictable train. Bali was to be a place of profound pleasure, flesh and hedonism, its natives treated as servitors and providers.
With the departure of the Dutch, Bali faced another set of rulers in its post-colonial existence. In 1965, the season for hunting communists throbbed with venal opportunity. Suharto, then Commander of the Indonesian Army Strategic Reserve, relished the abduction and murder of six senior army generals by the 30 September Movement, calling it a coup attempt by the Indonesia Communist Party (PKI).
One Western source present in Bali at the time, John Hughes, noted a perverse contrast between haunting luxury hotels and charred villages that were a contemporary reminder of vengeful slaughter. “For their Communist affiliations the menfolk were killed. The women and children fared far better; they were driven screaming away. The village itself was put to the torch.” An orgy of killings and burnings followed, with the night sky red as communists “were hunted down and killed.”
The destruction of the PKI, with the blessings of the US government, saw opportunities for the new military regime to exploit Bali. Here was a chance to play pimp to the West, an opportunity to mould Bali into a Batista-styled Cuba. As the anthropologist J. S. Lansing puts it in his 1995 study, the World Bank formed ties with the Indonesian regime to boost the tourism industry, inviting non-Balinese international hotel chains onto the island, leaving the locals to take up positions in the service industry. The process resulted in a cleansing of political fervour, assuring an even-tempered, unthreatening docility to tourism.
In its modern form, Bali’s tourism industry has become a plague of monumental proportion. A group calling itself Responsible Travel is not shy in calling the Indonesian island “one of the world’s most high-profile victims of mass tourism.” It goes on to note that tourists have been “culturally insensitive”, that the island’s “rice terraces are disappearing beneath hotels, resorts, and villas.” During the July-August period “you can easily spend a big chunk of your holiday stuck in traffic.”
The issue of cultural sensitivity has become a source of lasting aggravation. Tourists have been accused of insulting locals, fomenting altercations and disturbing the peace. On June 9, the Bali Mandara Toll Road and I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport witnessed what was reported as a “rampage” by a “foreign man” in charge of a stolen truck. The General Manager of the airport, Handy Heryudhitiawan, told the press that “a foreigner broke into I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport, Sunday (9/6) at 22.00 WITA using a truck and hit the tollgate barrier and other facilities.”
Modest measures have been imposed to address the maladies of overtourism. In February, a Bali Tourism Tax Levy of 150,000 rupiah ($15) was introduced for tourists arriving on the island, originally intended to finance cultural conservation and important infrastructure. One example is a railway proposal connecting Bali’s airport with Seminyak and Nusa Dua would ease congestion in the city proper.
The authorities have been less than forthcoming about any projects, while a majority of eligible arrivals – upwards of 60% – have been avoiding the levy. The acting governor of Bali, Sang Made Mahendra Jaya, has proposed a review of the existing laws and sanctions for those seeking to evade the fee.
None of this addresses the issue of numbers. Tourism minister Sandiaga Uno warned in August that an increase of 10% of existing tourists in South Bali would push it into the realm of overtourism. “We must avoid a situation like Barcelona, where tourists become public enemies.”
This month, Hermin Esti, a senior figure in the Coordinating Ministry of Maritime and Investment Affairs, revealed government plans to place a moratorium on the construction of new motels, villas and nightclubs. The duration of such a moratorium is vague, though the minister running that department, Luhut Pandjaitan, suggests it may last a decade. As with such solutions minted in the department of peripheral visionaries, these are unlikely to arrest the resentment that has begun to bite. Tourists to Bali are destined to become public enemies.
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That I haven’t set foot in Bali since 1993 does not mean that I’m unaware of these problems. It was for those same reasons, in fact, that I decided to stop going there, even though I have spent much time in Indonesia, some of it as a foreign student, and Bali was my go-to place to get away from Java for a break. But my history with Bali goes back longer; I had been a regular stopover visitor on the island since around 1974.
For a while, I naïvely deluded myself that the income from the burgeoning tourism industry was actually helping the culture and the traditional life of Balinese. Admittedly, that was back in the early ’90s, but even then, I was plain wrong. I could see what was happening all around the island; Jakarta money, Japanese money, American money and more, all the time benefiting the investors while turning the Balinese into hotel staff. The occasional snippet I read about Bali these days has me pretty appalled.
A good article, and thanks.
Ah yes, the scourge of tourism. I’ve never been to Bali, and may never do so. Nor Europe, England, South America… in fact I’ve been to very few places. Not that I can’t… I could pretty much go anywhere I wish if I wished, but I don’t. I’m what you might call a tourist xenophobe…I can’t stand the thought of going anywhere where I might have to mix it with thousands of thronging throngers and gawkers; dead-eyed dull-faced lumps of barely sentient flesh holding up their smartphones to this tree or that beach or the monkey that just stole their lunch, chattering inanely about nothing at all as if it were the epitome of intelligent exchange and always, always, on the lookout for the next feed, the next drink, the next piss-stop, the next chance for that ‘special moment.’
Let’s face it, this planet has been royally fucked by the advent of tourism. In all my years of living in northern Asia, privileged as I was to be in the company of locals who took me to many many places of historical and social significance, the downside, always, was that the experience was attenuated by the presence of thousands of others also intent on getting their share of the experience. What’s the point of climbing one of the five sacred mountains in China -Taishan – if when you get to the top you find about ten thousand others had already arrived before you? Or going to Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province as well as being the original capital of that country after the five kingdoms amalgamated, only to find yourself in a street crowd crush of thousands and unable to move?
Tourism sucks, big time. Whether it’s cruise ships, where you’re stuck on a floating shit show with thousands of lunatics intent on getting drunk and engaging in as much casual sex with strangers as they can accommodate, or being bussed around some country by a tour company intent on fleecing as many dollars out of your pockets as possible, or of the dubious joys of moving through a swathe of international airports – belts off, shoelaces too, unpack your travel bags, repeat, repeat, count yourself lucky if you escape unscathed – or being mugged, or catching some disease, or losing your luggage, or finding that your ideal travel partner is an A Grade jerk and how the hell did you never know beforehand what a nightmare it was going to turn out to be…
Don’t say you haven’t been warned!
What nonsense.
This is a view that is based on the 10 km strip either side of Denpasar airport.
This is about 5% of Bali. Kuta and Legian is to Bali what Ios is to Greece, or Ibiza is to Spain or what Cancun is to Mexico.
Bali itself remains a cultural icon of Asia.
Ubud has reinvented itself as a culinary and artistic destination. The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival is one of the most highly regarded in the world.
The annual Ubud Food festival is probably the most outstanding celebration of indigenous food and culture in Asia.
Nedewi is the surfing destination for anyone that enjoys a left break.
Singaraja remains a picturesque colonial relic, unspoiled by tourism.
The Balinese combine their religious and cultural traditions with their contemporary desire for prosperity for their family and society. Only the most mean-spirited would nitpick about their failings
We would do well to learn from the balance they have achieved between desire for prosperity and their traditional values
For me, the world seemed to change significantly by the second half of the 80s. I also changed. Thankfully, I had done my cultural / geographic excursions before then, mostly alone on the ‘hippy trail’, occasionally meeting friends in far-off places. Once I arrived on a continent, the traveling was done mostly by bus, train, donkey or shank’s pony. Sometimes language was an impediment, particularly in rural areas, but a bit of forward planning, obtaining of translator pamphlets, some cultural research, patience and respect served well. A few times there were ‘sticky’ situations, mostly related to local and intra-state power struggles, which my accommodators would usually warn me about.
My last trip to Bali was 1983. By that time, it was increasingly becoming a destination for 20-30 year old tourists from Oz, France, Germany, England, Japan and to a lesser extent Americans. To say the least, their cultural awareness and behavior left much to be desired, with much drunkenness and flaunting behavior. And Javanese opportunists were coming to take advantage of them. Even by that time, the Balinese were becoming stressed by it, and I didn.t want to be a part of it. Mind you, I am aware that other than the young’ns, there were other (older) more genteel tourists taking to the hotels fashioned in ‘Western’ style to look at the beaches in the tropics, rather than in the pensions and for a cultural experience – not my scene.
From the mid-80s onwards, all my travel was for business. It still all required language and cultural familiarization, but also a much deeper understanding of the geo-political and economic circumstances prevalent. Dealing at first with Europeans and Americans was fairly straightforward, although Americans were significantly more competitive and somewhat culturally uncertain and insular. Later when dealing in the Middle East, East Asia and South-East Asia, dealings were more nuanced, but one couldn’t move sideways without the British and Americans having their feelers all over you. And as the ‘cold war’ lapsed, for the want of another term, the Americans started running amok. For me, it was time to vacate that scene, and return to business in still sleepy but aspirational Oz.
From that time, despite the agonies and miseries persisting for the non-westernized countries, world tourism increased by more than 200% – maybe that could be seen as ‘first world’ escapism (and buy-up)?
To me, today’s jittery world seems to be a progression of America ‘running amok’, and the inevitable complexity of ‘push-backs’ responding to it.