Number Of Australian Tourists In Bali Drops

Denpasar, Bali, Nov 22 (Antara) - The number of Australian tourists visiting Bali has dropped over the past three months, but a tour operator believes this condition is normal. "It`s normal for the number of tourist arrivals to fluctuate," Tjok Gede Agung, a businessman, said on Friday. He noted that the decrease in tourist numbers was not related to the row over espionage between Australia and Indonesia but was due to the global economic conditions that have temporarily affected foreign tourist arrivals on the world`s most famous resort island. The Bali tourism office recorded the arrival of 74,634 Australian tourists in Bali in July 2013, but this figure dropped to 71,701 in August 2013 and 67,684 in October 2013. Overall, the number of Australian tourists in Bali is still high, at 668,902 people during the period from January to October 2013. This figure is down by 2.25 percent from the 684,312 people received in the same period in 2012. Australia has contributed 25.03 percent of the total number of foreign tourists in Bali, which stands at 2,672,249. The number of Chinese tourists in Bali continues to increase, with 329,426 people arriving during the first 10 months of this year, up 23.22 percent from the 267,353 people received during the same period last year. China contributed the second-largest number of foreign tourist arrivals in Bali, constituting 12.33 percent of the total, followed by Japan in third place, with 171,670 tourists, or 6.42 percent of the total number of foreign tourists in Bali.