Call to Stop New Hotel Projects in Bali

Bali Tourism Board Wants a Moratorium on New Hotel Projects.

Beritabali.com reports that the Bali Tourism Board (BTB) is recommending that the government of Bali impose at least a temporary moratorium on the construction of new hotels in Bali. Such a moratorium would, if implemented, require Bali's regents and municipal mayors to freezes the issuance of new building permits.

BTB concludes that earlier calls by the Bali's governor for a moratorium on new hotels has been ignored by regional leaders who viewed the governor's demand as lacking the force of law.

The chairman of the BTB, Ngurah Wijaya, said a moratorium remains the sole way of halting new hotel developments in the face of the strong desire by investors to commence Bali projects.

"Everyone wants to invest in Bali, everyone wants to own accommodation in Bali; there must now be some limitation," explained Ngurah Wijaya.

Pointing to the limited carrying capacity of Bali in terms of infrastructure, water supplies and electricity supply - Wijaya believes now is the time to limit new hotels in Bali. Moreover, he argued that the number of available room in Bali is now more than sufficient to meet demand. Data supplied by Bali's Tourism Office calculates 46,000 commercial accommodation rooms exists in Bali.

Commenting separately, the head of the Bali Tourism Office (Kadiparda), Ida Bagus Subhiksu, admitted that the one possible way to halt new project construction is through the imposition of a moratorium.

"If viewed from the analysis of the number of rooms available, there is an obvious oversupply of rooms," said Subhisku.

The top government tourism official for Bali went on to explain that calls for moratoriums have been made since 1993. Unfortunately, rules on regional autonomy allow regents and municipal officials to ignore instructions issued by a provincial governor. The final authority to issue licenses for hotel construction lies on the regency level.

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