TOURISTS entering Bali through Denpasar’s Ngurah Rai airport are facing growing delays getting through the long visa queues with booming numbers arriving from source markets like Australia.
The Australian intake grew by 39% last year and is now the largest foreign tourism market for Bali, with more than 500,000 arrivals.
Tourism authorities are trying to decide what can be done to reduce queues in busy arrival periods, like the daily afternoon peak between 2pm and 5pm.
Bisnis Bali reports that, even though there are a total of 26 visa-on-arrival counters at the airport, delays of as much as two hours are being encountered by those landing during the peak.
Bali Update says as many as 1200 passengers land between 2pm and 5pm. Assuming an average of 2.5 minutes to process each visa-on-arrival and the full operation of 26 visa counters, it can take up to two hours just to clear the visa purchase process.
“With this condition, the tourists will certainly be bored,” Golkar Party legislator Wayan Puspanegara told local media. “This is like a bad dream, not in keeping with the happiness the tourists seek.”
Puspanegara said the problem might require the widening of the visa-on-board program to more flights, beyond the current limitation of incoming Garuda flights from Japan.
Puspanegara also said that other services at Bali’s airport were below standard, pointing to what he said was a lack of evenhandedness by Customs officials in dealing with imported goods carried by tourists. He said that the process of passing through Customs need not be prolonged for tourist visitors not bringing contraband items into the country.
The chairman of the Association of Indonesia Travel Agents (ASITA) for Bali, Al Purwa, called on the government to allow tourists to purchase their visas online. Pointing to other destinations which have extended such a service to visitors, such as Cambodia, Purwa has written to Bali’s governor, the chief of the Bali Tourism Service and the general manager of Bali’s Airport Authority asking for the online visa option to be introduced.
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