Last year there were 11.5 million domestic and international visitors to Bali, but Indonesia is seeking to boost this to 20 million a year by building the country’s biggest cruise port and terminal in South Bali's Benoa. Indonesian company Pelindo III is poised to dredge the bay to make way for the project.

"At the moment people have Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai (to sail to) but Bali is very rare because the infrastructure is not there yet," Pelindo III chief executive Ari Askhara said. The company hopes to get final approval for the A$190 million project at the end of August. The project will create space for three cruise ships at a time, rather than just one. The project will also include a passenger terminal and a 90-berth marina. He said he wants to lure luxury travellers from the yacht clubs of Singapore. While more than 3 million tourists travel on cruise ships every year in the East Asia-Australia region, Indonesia only welcomes 200,000.

Indonesian tourism minister Arief Yahya says “with the availability of this new terminal facility, it is hoped that the target of 500,000 foreign tourist arrivals from cruise ships for the year of 2019 can be achieved,” he said. There are also plans in the works to develop a cruise terminal at Celukan Bawang, to the north of Bali.

Bali Tourism Office Chief Anak Agung Gede Yuniartha Putra said with Denpasar airport at capacity, the cruise ship terminal was vital for the island. Constant traffic is already encouraging people to island hop. "With this kind of traffic jam ... Every day there are about 2000-2500 people crossing there (to Lombok and Gili Trawangan) by fast boat."

• Currently: 11.5 million visitors, Indonesia is seeking to boost that to 20 million
• Currently: 200,000 cruise ship visitors, Indonesia is seeking to boost that to 500,000

There are over 17,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago, so there are lots of places to discover, more opportunities, more visitors to attract, and more wealth to share. In a 2016 blog, Terje H. Nilsen, co-owner of Seven Stones made this important observation regarding the growing numbers of foreign and domestic tourist arrivals and the apparent oversupply of hotel rooms. He said “If you take this growth and imagine all of these people stayed in double rooms, with an average stay of about four nights, divide the number of rooms needed per night by hotels with an average of 250 rooms, and you come to the realisation that Bali needs 30 new hotels every year to keep up with the growth!”

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