Jon Gwyther shot some pictures of Kuta Beach and it shows how eerily lonely the tourist destination as become.
Bali is expected to open to international tourists on 11th September 2020.
Many resort workers have gone home to villages and small towns, taking up traditional ways of earning a living to feed themselves and their families.
In a sign of how far the economy of the Indonesian island has declined, some rural residents have turned to bartering fruit and vegetables so that they can save their limited cash to buy necessities.
Bali, with a population of 4.4 million and eight times the physical size of Singapore, is Indonesia’s tourism engine, boasting spectacular beaches, terraced rice fields, scenic temples and ideal weather. Largely Hindu in a predominantly Muslim nation, Bali carved out its own identity as a tourist destination decades ago and was once widely viewed from abroad as an independent country. Hoping to capitalize on the Bali name, the central government began a campaign last year to create 10 “new Bali” destinations.
Depended Heavily On Tourism
More than half of Bali’s economy depends directly on tourism, and a quarter is engaged in tourism-related activities, such as transporting visitors and supplying food to hotels and restaurants. Last year, Bali attracted more than six million tourists from abroad and 10 million from Indonesia.
The economy has suffered through other disasters: the 2002 Bali bombing, the 2003 SARS epidemic and the 2017 eruption of the Mount Agung volcano. But the coronavirus outbreak has been the most devastating.
In March, Indonesia banned foreign visitors from the worst-hit countries and, weeks later, extended the ban to all foreign tourists. In May, the government banned domestic tourists from traveling to Bali, although officials and business travelers with a negative coronavirus test were allowed.
During the first half of the year, the island received 1.1 million foreign tourists, almost all of them before the pandemic. That was a drop from nearly 2.9 million during the same period last year. Comparative figures for domestic tourists were not available.
See what Bali Looks Like Now