Sex before marriage ban threatens Bali’s popularity with Australian travellers

Bali’s status as Australians’ favourite international holiday spot is under threat from bizarre new laws banning sex outside marriage.

Bali’s status as Australians’ favourite international holiday destination is under threat from new laws banning sex outside of marriage and cohabitation by unmarried couples.

 

The bizarre laws passed by Indonesia’s government this week, have the local tourism industry up in arms, and Australian travel agents alarmed.

Australian Federation of Travel Agents chief executive Dean Long said he had written to Indonesia’s ambassador to Australia raising the concerns of the travel industry, and seeking clarification on the implementation of the laws.

“We want to ensure Australians can still have confidence in what remains a favoured holiday destination,” said Mr Long.

By coincidence the laws were passed as search engine Google revealed Australians’ most searched travel destination in 2022, was Bali.

In a year when international travel took flight again after two years on ice, the term “flights to Bali” was searched more than any other, beating “Japan travel”, “New Zealand travel declaration” and “flights to Fiji”.

The results were not too surprising given Bali’s pre-pandemic popularity with Australians.

In 2019, about a million Aussies visited the Indonesian holiday isle and since reopening in April, numbers have steadily rebuilt.

Airline capacity was returning but confusion and concern erupted as a result of Tuesday’s law change set to take place over the next three years.

Indonesia Institute founder Ross Taylor said the fine print of the laws revealed only a formal complaint from a close relative of the couple concerned could lead to prosecution.

He said that was still cold comfort to the broader tourism industry which would undoubtedly suffer as a result of the ban which had received global media attention.

“If you really wanted to think of a way that Indonesia could go about blowing the tourism recovery that’s well underway for Bali they probably couldn’t come up with a better idea,” said Mr Taylor.

“Using the world cup soccer analogy, it’s very much an own goal.”

Google also revealed the most common travel-related questions punched into the search engine over the year, led by “can unvaccinated people travel” followed by “can Australians travel to Bali”.

Mr Long said the same sort of queries were being asked of travel agents as well.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty for Australians about entry requirements to other countries, and there’s a huge desire to make sure they’re compliant when travelling,” Mr Long said.

“Australians are very much aware that not everybody has the same laws and they want to be as prepared as they need to be.”

The fourth most asked travel-related Google query was “why are flights so expensive” which Mr Long said was not so easy to answer.

“It is the number one barrier that we’re finding to turn people’s aspiration to travel, into a booking to travel,” he said.

“Airfares are cost prohibitive to middle Australia and we’re finding those that are travelling are people who don’t have mortgages, and young people who have saved during the pandemic and are hungry for experiences they’ve missed in the past couple of years.”

He said until international airfares stabilised and decreased, travel would not return to pre-pandemic levels.

“It’s just not sustainable,” Mr Long said.

“We have limited low-cost carriers flying internationally and we haven’t seen the return of Chinese carriers, which will put downward pressure on fares.”

Beyond the top four most searched for travel destinations, Australians were googling London, Singapore, Thailand, Hawaii, Vietnam and New York.