Sitting almost 600 miles east of Jakarta in the Indian Ocean, the Indonesian island of Bali often brings up contrasting associations of extreme luxury and party destination.
The island’s natural scenery of cascading rice terraces and white-sand beaches has made it the site of choice for countless luxury hotel chains. Approximately a six-hour flight from Australian cities like Sydney and Melbourne, Bali has for generations also been the inexpensive destination of choice for Australians looking to get away on holiday.
Averages of numbers released by the Australian and Indonesian governments show that approximately 1.5 million Aussies come to Bali in a given year, which far outnumbers those who make it out to large Indonesian cities such as Jakarta and Surabaya.
More Australians travel to Japan than Bali for first time in history
But according to the latest numbers dropped by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of travelers who went to Indonesia was overtaken by a new destination in February 2026 and the last month for which traveler data has been calculated.
Japan, which welcomed 103,360 Australian travelers compared to Indonesia’s 101,630, overtook the country as the second most popular destination for Australians for the first time since travelers numbers first started getting recorded.
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Due above all to proximity and the strong cultural and business connections between the two countries, New Zealand retained its top spot as the most popular destination for Australians with 113,460 February trips. The number of visitors to Indonesia meanwhile fell 4.9% year-over-year while Japan-bound travelers increased by 6.2%.
The reasons for this shift in travel trends are multifaceted and come down to factors ranging from growing interest in exploring new destinations to the increase of low-cost airline routes to Asia from many Australian cities.
The U.S. has also fallen in its ranking as a travel destination in the last year under the Trump administration’s anti-immigration focus.
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“That word of mouth spreads quickly”: The rise of Japan as a tourist destination
“Japan has grown rapidly over the past three years and when consumers come home raving about their experience, that word of mouth spreads quickly,” Flight Centre Travel Group leisure CEO James Kavanagh said to local outlet news.com.au of its own booking trends.
Over the last few months, Bali has also seen a significant drop of tourists from the U.S. due to the war in Iran. With most flights to Bali from the U.S. going through a connection in Dubai, airspace closures have severely disrupted the ability to get to the island from North America and Europe.
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“A lot of their codeshares were through Doha with Qatar Airways, and if airplanes can’t fly into Doha, it would certainly put a constraint on traffic flow,” Mayur Patel, the Asia head at aviation consultancy OAG, said to Fortune magazine in March 2026.
The current security situation in the Middle East, along with Australians growing interest in discovering new destinations, have been causing significant strain to the local tourism industry and an economy that is significantly dependent on tourism.
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