Did Bali tourism fall in 2025? The tourism office's domestic survey fell 5.02%, its foreign count rose 9.72%

Ask how many tourists came to Bali last year and the answer arrives as one number, usually a record. The tourism office publishes two, they count different things, and they moved in opposite directions. A third, from the governor’s administration, is larger than either.

Direct foreign arrivals to Bali reached 6,948,754 in 2025 against 6,333,360 in 2024 — TABEL 2 of Table-1-7-Final-5.xls, typed cells rather than a formula.^{Source: 1}Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified A note elsewhere in the same workbook puts the increase at 9.72 per cent.^{Source: 1}Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified The table counts arrivals langsung: into Bali directly, not into Indonesia elsewhere and onward. The file does not say how many take that second route.

Why is the governor’s figure larger?

Because another office counts it, and counts something else. The provincial government published the year on its own site on 20 July 2026: 16.3 million visits to Bali, made up of 7.05 million foreign and about 9.3 million domestic tourists, Bali being 45.8 per cent of national foreign arrivals.^{Source: 4}Pemerintah Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 29/09/2026Confidence: Verified On 1 January 2026 the state agency ANTARA reported the governor, Wayan Koster, sourcing that count to the airport operator: Angkasa Pura data to 31 December 2025, “7.05 million and more”, plus about 71,000 cruise passengers at Benoa, roughly 7.12 million in all.^{Source: 5}ANTARA News BaliUnverified TABEL 2 puts the national total at 15,386,646 and its own share cell for Bali at 45.16094020750201.^{Source: 1}Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified

This is no discrepancy to be resolved. The tourism office prints a border count credited to the statistics agency; the governor’s office prints an airport operator’s throughput with cruise arrivals added. Two offices, counting the same island two ways. The provincial statements do not quite agree either: in January that figure was the airport count alone, cruise arrivals on top; by July, the whole foreign count.

Did the bigger number grow?

It fell, and it is a different instrument. Domestic visits came to 9,612,511 in 2025 against 10,120,786 in 2024, and the line under TABEL 18, in Table-13-23-Final-6.xls, reads hasil survei Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali — a survey result, not a count at a gate.^{Source: 2}Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified The table’s own change cell for that year holds −5.022090181533331, which we print as a fall of 5.02 per cent.^{Source: 2}Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified The two-decimal form is ours; the rise is the office’s own wording. A survey carries sampling error, and this file quantifies none.

Where we may be wrong

The counts must never be added. A foreign buyer arriving via Jakarta sits cleanly in none of them, and we publish no total.

The foreign figure does not reach the reader through one office alone. The SOURCE and SUMBER lines under TABEL 2 name Badan Pusat Statistik Provinsi Bali and the tourism ministry.^{Source: 1}Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified BPS Provinsi Bali published the same count on 2 February 2026: 6,948,754 direct foreign arrivals for January-December 2025, the same 9.72 per cent rise, 41,169 of them through the seaports.^{Source: 6}ANTARA News BaliUnverified The body the table credits publishes the figure itself, and it agrees. We did not open that release: the site returned a 403 to us, so we read the figure in the state agency’s report instead. An archived copy of the release page does exist, and we did not read the annual figure there either.

The harder objection: the same agency publishes a domestic series of its own, and it moves the other way. Its statistician gave domestic trips to Bali in 2025 as 26,615,306, up 17.53 per cent, with intra-province travel rising 27.17 per cent from 16.4 million to 20.9 million trips.^{Source: 7}detikBaliUnverified Trips by Indonesian residents are a fourth instrument, not a contradiction of a survey of visits — this piece’s own argument, one level out.

The unit is arrivals, not people: kedatangan counts entries, so a visitor who comes twice is counted twice. Repeat visits are unquantified.

The notes print the 2025 total as “6,948754” and the increase as “(9,72%)” — the source’s own missing separator and comma decimal — and “*TEMPORARY DATA” stands one row above the note stating that total.^{Source: 1}Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified The file does not say which figures it qualifies, so neither do we.

The page carrying the 2025 volume is dated 8 July 2026 and offers six Excel workbooks.^{Source: 3}Dinas Pariwisata Provinsi Bali, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified We read two of them as they stood on 27 September 2026; with no text layer, the values were decoded from the spreadsheet records. The PDF edition registered here earlier no longer opens.