GEIS-新闻详情

Bali plunges into second Covid-19 lockdown and more misery just as reopening was within reach

2021-07-07 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-亚洲原网页

DENPASAR, INDONESIA - Before Bali entered its second lockdown this month, Ms Diaz, 32, floor manager at Watercress Cafe, was just about muddling through.

On a normal day last month, her restaurant, on the main thoroughfare between Canggu and Seminyak, would chalk up sales to a largely foreign clientele of about 140 people either dining in or getting food deliveries.

And while that volume was a fraction of what the bistro would normally do at this time of year, the revenue was enough to schedule 20 to 30 staff. But on a recent weekday, she had just nine on duty, and the frustration of 15 months of on-again-off-again shutdowns was beginning to show.

"It's so depressing," Ms Diaz, who would only give her nickname, told the Straits Times. "Things were just starting to get better."

Thanks to an ambitious vaccination programme, where roughly 70 per cent of the island's adults have at least been partially vaccinated against Covid-19, Bali seemed to be on a path to reopening.

An uptick of domestic tourism and initiatives to work from the holiday island had yielded a small but steady recovery relative to the dark days at this time last year.

On the last Friday of June, the island notched up more than 60 aircraft arrivals compared with just four in the same period a year earlier, according to airport data.

A check of resorts in Seminyak and Uluwatu revealed occupancy rates in some cases averaged roughly 75 per cent in June. Occupancy across the island averaged 20 per cent in June, according to the Bali Hotel Association.

As recently as last month, Indonesia's Tourism Minister, Mr Sandiaga Uno, said plans to host small groups of foreign holiday makers in designated locations were near completion. Plans were even in the works to offer a "vaccination tourism programme" where foreign tourists could get doses of the Covid-19 vaccine - for a fee - during their stay.

But since the July 2 lockdown, which expanded nearly nationwide on Wednesday (July 7) as new cases and deaths surged, occupancy has broadly halved in these same hotels as travellers scrambled to get flights home.

The number of new cases in Indonesia passed 31,000 on Tuesday. Officials have warned that daily cases may reach 50,000. At 728, the number of deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday is seven times that less than a month ago.

"This is a very difficult time for everyone," said Mr Ricky Putra, general manager at Six Senses resort in Uluwatu, where occupancy dropped by more than half to 10 per cent this week.

"We support the government's action. We certainly hope the rate of vaccinations increases so we can reopen."