Tourism Minister Paul Papalia urges holidaymakers to forget travelling to Bali and explore WA amid coronavirus crisis

West Australians are being urged to stop holidaying in Bali during the coronavirus crisis and instead explore their own backyard. In a call to arms to help WA businesses devastated by the China travel ban, Tourism Minister Paul Papalia pleaded for holidaymakers to forgo their next trip to the Indonesian island. He said half a million West Australians visited Bali every year, which was almost the equivalent of the total number of international holidaymakers that came to WA. Even if just 10 per cent chose to take a break locally instead of flying to Bali that number would be more than the 44,500 Chinese visitors who holidayed in WA last year. “Right now the easiest thing we can do, the biggest thing we can do, is to get Western Australians to stop going to Bali,” Mr Papalia said. “(About) 495,000 Western Australians go to Bali every year and if we can get them to stay here instead, that almost replaces our international holidaymaker market of 521,000 (visitors) in the 12 months to September who came to Western Australia from overseas to holiday.” Indonesia yesterday confirmed its first two cases of coronavirus, a 64-year-old woman and her 31-year-old daughter, from the Jakarta satellite city of Depok, while a woman in her 30s who flew from Bali to Melbourne on Friday has also been diagnosed with the disease. At the weekend, Prime Minister Scott Morrison cast doubt on Indonesia’s capability to test its population. Mr Papalia said if people were concerned about risk, “the safest place ... right now is probably Australia”. “I’d be concerned right now, just based on the advice from the Federal Government, appropriate health authorities and the World Health Organisation, that Indonesia doesn’t have a good visibility of what their coronavirus threat is and how exposed anyone will be if they visit there,” he said. “You’ve got to remember, it’s a developing country. If you look around the world at the impact of this virus in advanced countries with good healthcare systems, your care is going to be better — that’s just fact.” Flights and hotel prices are already being slashed for staycations and the State Government has committed an extra $4.85 million to Tourism WA’s domestic marketing program. Destinations across the globe are responding in similar ways, but Mr Papalia said Australia’s robust healthcare system and advanced governance gave it an advantage. “The really obvious opportunity for WA lies in that extraordinary number of Western Australians who go to Bali, noting that that is a far higher proportion than anywhere else in the country, and they have an alternative — they can stay here,” he said. “If we turn them around ... even 10 per cent would be the equivalent of more than all the people who come from Germany annually or more than all the people who come from China.” Indonesia Institute president Ross Taylor said Australian visitors to Bali had dropped by 5 per cent, but if the island was declared an unsafe destination the impact would be worse than after the 2002 bombings. “Bali is an easy target because there are seven-to-ten thousand West Aussies who go to Bali every week, but we would prefer a minister to keep his comments more general and not to be saying ‘abandon Bali’,” Mr Taylor said. “Bali appears to be relatively safe at the moment and West Australians have a very deep relationship with Bali.” A spokeswoman for Helloworld Travel declined to respond to the suggestion that people stop travelling to Bali, but said the agency had “some great deals in WA available at the moment”. A Flight Centre spokesman said WA was a destination it would promote heavily in the coming months. “There are, however, also many international destinations that are not significantly impacted at this time,” he said. “Domestically and internationally, there will be some really hot deals over the coming months. People will obviously consider how the virus spreads in the coming weeks and will make their own choices.” Tourism Council of WA chief executive Evan Hall said destinations across the globe were looking to attract visitors to replace the Chinese tourists they had lost since the outbreak in Wuhan. “It will be a competition for international visitors, it will be a competition between the States for interstate visitors and there’ll even be a competition to keep hold of our own local Western Australians as everyone will be aggressively marketing and in some cases discounting,” he said. “The challenge will be keeping hold of market share. Not only losing the visitors from China, but not losing our other visitors as everyone else steps up intense marketing and campaigning around the world.” AirAsia Indonesia chief executive Veranita Yosephine Sinaga said: “As of now, AirAsia’s services from Perth to Bali continue to operate as normal.”