Garuda Indonesia, the national flag carrier of Indonesia will serve Denpasar – Mumbai direct flight starting April 23. This new route will offer variety of connection flights to Indonesia for Indian tourists as the airline has served Jakarta – Mumbai route since 2016. Denpasar is the capital city and main hub of Bali.
To announce the launch to the Indian travel industry, the tourism ministry of Indonesia organised an event in Mumbai and the key spokespersons from Garuda Indonesia and Tourism ministry of Indonesia were present.
The GA-814 flight departs Denpasar at 3:40 p.m. and arrives in Mumbai at 8:25 p.m. Meanwhile, the GA-815 flight takes off from Mumbai at 9:50 p.m. and lands in Denpasar the next day at 7:55 a.m. (All times are local). The airline has deployed its Airbus A330-200 aircraft on the route, which has a seat configuration of 36 seats in Business Class and 186 seats in Economy Class.
Pahala N Mansury, president & CEO, Garuda Indonesia, said, “Before without direct flights from India to Indonesia, the tourist arrivals from India to our country has always been phenomenally high. This is why with the introduction of direct flights, we hope to take those numbers to another level. We got over 500,000 tourist arrivals from India in 2017 and we want to push this number to 700,000 by next year.”
The government of Indonesia has given the tourism industry top priority in 2018 and various new infrastructure and hospitality ammenties are being introduced. With respect to tourist arrivals from other countries, China is number one, Japan was on six and Korea is on seven. But in recent times, India is now on the sixth position of those arrivals. To Bali alone, India ranks third when it comes to tourist arrivals, after China and Australia. Indonesia recorded a growth of 6.9 per cent from India to Bali during January and February, 2018 with 805,538 tourist arrivals.
Arief Yahya, minister of tourism, Republic of Indonesia, further commented on this launch, “India has always remained a partner in our growth and by the numbers, one of the important markets for Indonesia. The opening of the new service from Mumbai to Denpasar will strengthen the relationship between Indonesia and India. India has become a promising market for Garuda Indonesia as the number of Indian tourists visiting the country has increased by 21.6 per cent in 2017. This is the highest growth noted as compared to other countries as Bali is one of prime tourist attractions for Indian travellers in Indonesia.”
The ministry of Tourism, Indonesia also spoke about Bali plus, where various packages for places like Komodo, Lombok and Lake Toba are planned to increase awareness about destination cities other than Bali. New concepts were discussed like Nomadic tourism and digital tourism.