Local Badung government is preparing new infrastructure to give Bali tourism a kick in the pants. This includes expanding the airport in Tuban to 3 times the size.
The Bali Times reports that Drs. I Ketut Sudikerta, a Deputy Regent of Badung, the regency that contains the Bukit, Kuta, Seminyak, talked about various ways that were being discussed to help the tourist industry. These include, a larger airport, a clampdown on dumping raw sewage into the ocean, better attention to garbage AND (hear this all Bali land owners) a new database that allow foreigners to register thier shady land deal, incase of a screw job. Right now freehold for an individual foreigner is impossible, so people jump through legal hoops having their local friend own it, setting up a company with a local, and having the company own it etc. Needless to say, in the past, plenty of people have lost the lot and plenty of locals (former owners and girlfriends, boyfriends etc. etc.) have got rich overnight.
Here’s Baliblog’s top 10 list of things that the Bali government should do to encourage tourism.
1. Realise they have the ‘Best Island in the World’, as a starting point.
2. Hire an international marketing firm to market the s**t out of it, in Europe, N. America and Asia.
3. Stop the Immigration, Customs, Tourist Police etc. from hitting up westerners for money.
4. Clean up the beaches around tourist areas.
5. Deal with the sewage
6. Ban beach vendors on certain parts of main beaches
7. Start an island-wide program to clean up the damn garbage
8. Set up a task force to target problem areas like Batur crater and Besakih temple, where tourists have been threatened with violence over money.
9. Clean up all the illegal moneychangers
10. Force ALL people selling land to westeners, to come to the database office, with the proper ID, certificates, forms etc. so that everybody is on the same page.
