Before COVID, During COVID, and Now
I wanted actual numbers on this one, not just headlines and vibes. So I pulled the data on Bali tourist arrivals and bad behaviour cases across three periods, before COVID, during COVID, and after, and lined them up side by side. The pattern that shows up is not subtle.
Before COVID, the Island Was Already Full
In 2019, Bali welcomed roughly 6.2 million foreign tourists, the peak year before the pandemic hit, according to figures reported by Bali Discovery. That number followed years of steady growth throughout the 2010s, with foreign arrivals climbing every single year leading up to 2019. Bali was already busy, already congested in places like Kuta and Seminyak, and already dealing with the early complaints about overdevelopment. This was the baseline before anything else happened.
The Pandemic Years Erased Almost Everything
Then COVID hit, and the numbers fell off a cliff. Foreign arrivals dropped to just over one million in 2020, then collapsed even further to a mere 51 international visitors in all of 2021, according to tourism data covering that decade. Fifty-one people. In February 2021 alone, only 12 foreign tourists entered the island. The economy here nearly collapsed during this stretch, and anyone who lived through it in Bali remembers how empty the streets and beaches became.
The Comeback Brought the Numbers Back, and the Problems With Them
Recovery started slowly in 2022 with around 2.1 million foreign arrivals, then accelerated fast. By 2023, Bali hit 5.27 million visitors, still 16 percent below the 2019 peak. In 2024, arrivals hit 6.33 million, finally surpassing the pre-pandemic record, and 2025 pushed that even higher to nearly 6.95 million according to recent BPS data. Bali is now busier than it has ever been in its history.
But here is where the comparison gets interesting. As the tourist numbers climbed back and then blew past pre-pandemic levels, so did the enforcement numbers around bad behaviour. ANTARA News reported that Bali’s immigration offices deported 335 foreigners in all of 2023, and that number jumped to 378 deportations between January and September 2024 alone, already surpassing the full prior year with three months still to go. Refused entries followed the same climb. Bali Discovery reported 217 foreigners refused entry in the first quarter of 2023, rising to 318 refused entries in the same quarter of 2024.
Even at the local office level, the trend holds. The Singaraja Immigration Office alone deported 17 foreign nationals in 2023, then nearly doubled that to 30 deportations in 2024, according to the Jakarta Globe. Nationally, the Directorate General of Immigration recorded 2,669 deportations and over 2,000 detentions between January and July 2025 alone.
What This Actually Tells Us
Lay the numbers out, and the story writes itself. Tourist numbers did not just recover after COVID; they blew past the old ceiling. But the misbehaviour cases did not grow at the same rate; they grew faster. More people are visiting Bali than ever, and a larger share of them are ending up in deportation and detention statistics than before the pandemic ever happened.
I have a theory on why, and it comes from living through the shift myself. During the pandemic years, Bali basically pressed pause and reset. When the doors opened back up, the flood of new visitors arrived at once, many of them first-timers with zero context on the culture here, arriving into an island that had spent two years quietly rebuilding its patience for tourism at all. The volume came back overnight. The education and preparation did not come back with it.
The immigration crackdowns, the raids, the increased enforcement, all of that is Bali playing catch up. The rules were always there. What changed is how seriously they are now being enforced, because the post-pandemic surge made it impossible to ignore the problem any longer.
There is also a simpler explanation worth naming. Social media moves faster now than it did in 2019. A single video of someone disrespecting a temple or getting into a fight with a police officer spreads globally within hours, which puts direct pressure on immigration offices to respond visibly and quickly. Enforcement numbers climbing is partly about actual behaviour getting worse, and partly about authorities no longer being able to quietly let things slide the way they might have before everyone had a phone recording every interaction.
If you are planning a trip here, this comparison should tell you something useful. The island is watching more closely now than it ever did before 2020. What might have gotten a warning a decade ago can get you deported today. The numbers do not lie, and neither does what I see walking around my own neighborhood every week.
