At 11.56AM, 16 February 2022, Singapore Airlines landed in Bali’s I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport, marking the first foreign airline to fly to Bali after the Indonesian government opened Bali to foreign tourism.
This inaugural flight was carrying 156 passengers straight from Singapore, 47 of whom were Indonesian citizens and 109 were foreigners. All of these passengers are now quarantining in Bali, the second batch of arrivals after Garuda Indonesia’s Narita, Japan, flight which marked the first international arrivals into Bali on 3 February 2022.
On that inaugural opening of the international airport, the Indonesian Government also approved a ‘Bubble Hotel Quarantine’ program. This special type of quarantine means that hotels have prepared a separate area in which quarantine guests can leave their rooms and enjoy certain selected facilities within that ‘bubble’. This allows visitors to at least enjoy a sense of a holiday as they are quarantining. Currently there are 27 bubble quarantine, and 54 in-room quarantine hotels/resorts.
There were five initial bubble hotels at the start of the program, including: The five hotels are Grand Hyatt Nusa Dua and Westin Resort in Nusa Dua, Griya Santrian in Sanur, Viceroy in Ubud, and Royal Tulip in Jimbaran.
After this initial Singapore Airlines flight on 16 February 2022, the airline will be now operating seven flights a week.
Indonesia has slowly been easing restrictions in order to encourage more travel, recently they announced that travellers with 3 vaccine shots would only have to quarantine for 3 days (2 nights) – double vaccinated travellers currently must quarantine for 5 days (4 nights).
This comes as welcome news as Batik Air is set to resume flights between Bali-Singapore direct, and discussions of Jet Star resuming direct services including to and from Australia.
