Visitor arrivals to during the first five months of 2006 were down by 8.77% compared to January-May last year, reported the newly appointed Head of the National Statistics Bureau, Rusman Hertawan. Comparing May to April, there was a slight increase of 0.89%, which was brought about by improved arrivals at Juanda airport in Surabaya , up 18.89%;  up 6.18% at Polonia airport, Medan , 3.9% at the Soekarno-Hatta airport in Jakarta , and 10.11% at the ports of Batam. Whereas, decreases were felt at Solo’s Airport with 20.16% down, Padang with - 9.42%, Lombok at - 6.82%, Tanjung Pinang, Riau was down -1.94% and arrivals at Bali’s Ngurah Rai  decreased by -1.84% compared to April.

Taiwanese and Korean Tourists rediscover Bali

In a further development, the airport authority of Bali recently reported that the number of international passengers to Bali in the first week of July showed that Bali still has not recovered from the slump in arrivals. International passengers were down 50% compared to the same period last year. This showed that the negative perception held in a number of major markets on the safety of holidays on Bali has still not improved, although the number of domestic passengers to the island is increasing.

Balidiscovery.com reported that total international arrivals to Bali in May fell -12.72% compared to the same month last year. Arrivals from were down – 58.4%; the Japanese market was down – 21.54% compared to May last year, although the situation is improving with the gap narrowing month by month.  's ASEAN neighbours still showed poor performance lagging -19.67% in May 2006 compared to May 2005. This is a worsening performance, widening a gap that was only -8.12% measured in April 2006.

Considerably improved, however, are the number of tourists from , up a hefty 45.87%, in fact in April the number of Taiwanese visitors to Bali was already up by a meaningful 51.42%

is another market making significant improvements, up11.31% compared to May 2005.

Additionally, arrivals from Europe remain essentially encouraging with May arrivals down a scant -3.61%, slightly off against April's month-on-month performance which was +1.92% better than the same month one year before. Within Europe , is emerging as a star in terms of Bali arrivals, improving a massive +20.24 for May 2006 as compared to just one year before.

The – comprising all source markets in North and South America , continued its improvement path in May, reports balidiscovery.com. May 2006 arrivals from 'The Americas' were down -19.04%, a substantial narrowing from just one month before in April when month-on-month arrivals were down -39.78%.

Meanwhile, Tim Colebatch, writing in theAustralian media, The Age, confirms that so far this year, the number of Australians visiting has slumped by half. Many Australians are now going to Thailand or Singapore. Others are fanning out all over the world, from India to the Gulf states, Italy, Africa and the US.

This year the big shift (of outbound Australian tourists) has been to Thailand (up 35,000 or 56 % on last year), Italy (up 25 %), Singapore (22%), India (17%) and Africa (16 %). The big growth since 2001 has been in travel to New Zealand, South-East Asia, Europe, China and Fiji. Trips to Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Japan have risen more than 50%, reports the Age.

On the other hand, inbound Australia tourists have also slumped. By contrast, the number of tourists arriving in Australia has slumped by 50,000, with steep falls in arrivals from Singapore and Malaysia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.