The Head Alliance of Bali Marginal Tourism (APPMB), Wayan Puspanegara has stated that he will refuse the government’s plan to increase restrictions during the upcoming holiday season.
The provincial government recently announced that they plan to increase restrictions during the upcoming year-end holiday season by implementing a level 3 partial lockdown from the current level 2 that is still being implemented. This was planned to prevent creating another Covid-19 cluster during the holiday season in Bali. “The Provincial government will ban any fireworks for new year’s eve celebrations in all tourism sectors as the level 3 partial lockdown will be implemented,” said Bali Governor, Cok Ace on Saturday (20/11).
As a response to this implementation, Puspanegara said that this policy will potentially affect the tourism sector that he has been trying to revive as domestic visitors finally started coming to the island for vacation. “APPMB will definitely refuse and ask them to revoke this policy as it seems like it was implemented without any logical reasoning and will potentially cause distrust and chaos among the people,” Puspanegara said.
Additionally, he claimed that this policy is not in line with the effort of all the tourism businesses to revive the industry by implementing strict prevention protocols as well as creating a safer tourism environment for tourists. Puspanegara was worried that this news will cause massive cancelations from domestic visitors as they become reluctant to travel due to this policy.
“The news has been rapidly spread to both national and international markets, resulting in massive cancelations from potential domestic visitors while this should be our peak season for tourism. And if they implement this policy, more businesses are expected to go bankrupt as they become unable to cover their overhead costs to keep their businesses running.” Pupanegara concluded.
However, the Vice Governor, Cok Ace stated that the government will still allow new year celebrations with strict prevention protocols in place. “The authorities from the Covid-19 Handling Task Force will supervise the upcoming Christmas and New Year’s celebrations to assure the implementation of prevention protocols in our tourism sectors such as tourist attraction, shopping center and also Churches to prevent Covid-19 transmission during the event.” Cok Ace concluded.
