Bali is Offering Free Tour & Staycations to Its Residents Who Need to Post Their Experience in Social Media

To say that the tourism sector has taken a hit due to the coronavirus pandemic is an understatement.

You basically can’t travel and even if you could, most countries would quarantine you for awhile.

But businesses have to keep going and things can’t freeze forever.

Is it worth the risk to reopen, though?

Free Staycations 

According to Today Online, Indonesia is offering free tours and staycations to 4,440 residents of its resort island of Bali.

This comes as part of a seven-week tourism dry-run to promote the international holiday hotspot and test its coronavirus health protocols.

Back in April, authorities had closed off tourism in Bali for virus preventive measures. However, this also drastically affected the economy.

It has since reopened from 31 July but numbers are naturally way lower than usual.

It was reported that Bali had over 10 million visitors last year with 6.3 million being foreigners.

However, they’re not going to be making all 4,440 people go at once.

The participants would be split into 12 groups and given two-night stays at resorts between 7 October and 27 November.

This would help control numbers and test out safety measures.

The trips will include local tours and participants are expected to promote “New Normal Bali” on social media.

A little promotion is a pretty fair trade-off.

Just remember that all of this is for locals only.

A quick reminder that Bali is closed to all foreigners for the remainder of 2020.

COVID-19 In Indonesia

This news does come at a rather harrowing time.

Recent data showed a spike of daily cases in Indonesia by 4,634 people.

That brought the total number of virus cases to 262,022.

This also rose the death toll up to 10,105 which is the largest recorded virus death toll in southeast Asia.

Compared to the rest of the country, though, Bali actually had better control of the situation initially.

Still, between 1 August to 23 August, there were around 48 new virus cases every day. This number rose to an average of 127 for September.

According to some reports, this may also be due to ‘inaccurate testing‘.

Apparently, Bali’s rapid antibody test kits do not detect current infections.

“They only detect if a person has been infected within a few weeks or months ago.”

Even as life slowly returns to normalcy, let’s all continue to practice safe distancing and health measures.

Mask-up, sanitise, keep your distance and maybe be wary if the restaurant queue is too long.

Anyway, while Singapore doesn’t have free staycations, we do have the SingapoRediscover vouchers and crazy staycation promos.

Don’t say we bojio, eh~