Bali welcomes back tourists as Covid-19 cases fall, backpackers not welcome

Indonesia's popular tourist island set to welcome back international tourists. Photo / Kudung Setiawan, Unsplash

Indonesia has eased Covid-19 restrictions for Bali however, international travellers are set to face stricter rules to protect the popular tourist island from new variants.

During a virtual conference on Monday, Maritime and investment minister Luhut Panjaitan said tourist spots in most parts of Bali will now accept visitors, given they have followed rigorous protocols such as providing their vaccination status on a government-verified phone app.

Additionally, international visitors must take 3 polymerase chain reaction tests before visiting then quarantine for eight days once on the island.

Plans to reopen Bali were initially posed for the start of the year however these were cancelled after the delta variant hit and reported daily cases reached 56,000 in July.

As of Monday, reported cases were under 3,000 per day; an improvement that has allowed them to progress with opening up to visitors.

"The rapidly improving Covid-19 situation in Java and Bali has caused the PPKM level to decline faster than we expected," Panjaitan said during the virtual conference.

At the same time, the government announced plans to tighten quarantine processes at the borders, utilising genome sequencing to swiftly identify new variants.

Last week Minister Luhut said the tourism restart would focus on "quality visitors".

This shift could see a drastic change to the tourism demographic, reported news site Coconuts.

"We will filter tourists that come visit. We don't want backpackers to come so that Bali remains clean, where the people who come are of quality," Luhut said on Friday.