Over the past few days being in Bali, I am seeing a parallel trend to Phuket, bolstering the view is data released by BaliDiscovery that forecasts over 850,000 Mainland Chinese visitors by the end of 2016 to the Island of the Gods.

Looking at  Bali's airport arrivals for the first 7 months of the year (January through July), foreign passenger arrivals has spiked up by 19.8% comparing year-on-year-figures.

When the dust settled by the close of December, a record 4.8 million foreign arrivals are expected to tip the scale.

While Australia still accounts for 23% of the international traffic, and has surged 12% versus 2016, the real storyline is Mainland China with 25% growth and 20% market share.

Mind the gap and by the time 2017 rolls around Bali’s two-horse tourism race is expected to be neck and neck.

One additional note on Bali is that European and North American numbers are up in comparison to last year, hence there remains some equilibrium between East and West.

In mid-2016 Indonesia spurred their tourism market by offering visa-free travel for a number of countries including Mainland China. 

Bill Barnett is the Founder and Managing Director of C9 Hotelworks, who are a leading consulting firm specializing in hotels, tourism and property development in Asia Pacific. C9 assists developers, private equity and financial institutions, and investors in providing market research, feasibility studies, hotel operator negotiations, asset management and transaction/due diligence support.

From their base of operations in Thailand the group is considered a leading regional player in market intelligence, and publish regular industry updates.

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