Bali tourism scared by Australia`s terror alert

Denpasar (ANTARA News) - Australia`s warning over possible terrorist acts again in Indonesia including Bali has scared tourism businesspeople in the resort island, a businessman has said.

"Only reading the news (on the warning), I was directly depressed. The result of a struggle to increase the number of foreign tourists would as if disappear," Managing Director of PT Pacific World Nusantara, Ida Bagus Lolec, told Antara here Monday.

Lolec who is also a manager of the Indonesia Congress & Convention Association believed that Australia as a developed country must be serious with the information on the terrorist threat.

He said tourism businesspeople in Bali are still traumatized by the 2002 and 2005 bomb attacks which had hit the tourism business in the resort island and Indonesia in general.

However, he said, it was not easy to recover the tourism condition, especially to build the international community`s confidence that Indonesia and Bali in particular are safe.

Australia is a big market for Bali`s tourism sector besides Japan and other countries which send more than 2,000 tourists to the Goddess island annually.

"Let alone the terrorist threat, the European Union`s ban on flying with Indonesian airlines has bothered us," said Lolec who dealt with many tourists from Europe, the United States and Australia.

Lolec expressed hope the government would soon respond to the information by stepping up security in the country and taking strategic measures through diplomacy, especially to countries known as Indonesia`s tourism markets.

"Make sure that terrorist acts would not recur, then convince the world mainly tourist-supplying countries like Australia that our country would remain safe," he said.

He also hoped tourism businesspersons in Bali and Indonesia in general would continue to work hard to help the government recover the country`s tourism image at the eyes of the international community.

"The feeling of being scared is indeed inevitable but we have to be able to convince the world that Bali remains to be a favorite place for vacation," he said.