JAKARTA/BALI, Indonesia— Indonesia is accelerating its push into marine and cruise tourism, betting that the world’s largest archipelagic nation can turn its thousands of islands, beaches, reefs, cultures and major ports into a more powerful tourism economy beyond conventional land-based vacations.
The opportunity is considerable.
Cruise traffic through ports operated by Pelindo Regional 3 in eastern Indonesia increased sharply during the first half of 2025, when 107 cruise calls were recorded, up 68 percent year-on-year. Those ships carried 224,136 passengers, representing growth of 69 percent. Benoa in Bali remained the leading cruise gateway, accounting for 37.4 percent of ship calls and handling 86,616 passengers during the period.
Indonesia’s strategy is therefore moving from ambition toward a test of capacity: Can the country convert more cruise calls into high-value tourism while avoiding congestion, environmental degradation and a tourism model in which international operators capture much of the economic benefit?
Regulations are opening Indonesian waters
A major part of Indonesia’s strategy has been removing administrative obstacles for foreign yachts and cruise vessels. Transportation Minister Regulation PM 121 of 2015 was an important earlier step because it provided easier access for tourists arriving on foreign-flagged cruise ships. However, Indonesia has since updated that regulatory framework.
The principal regulation today is Transportation Minister Regulation PM 4 of 2022 concerning foreign yachts and cruise ships in Indonesian waters. It was amended through PM 14 of 2023, which expanded provisions covering entry and exit terminals and ports where foreign cruise passengers can embark or disembark.
That distinction is important because Indonesia is no longer merely experimenting with cruise access. It is building a broader regulatory structure designed to make the archipelago easier to include in international itineraries.
The country’s attraction to cruise planners is obvious. A single Indonesian itinerary can combine Bali, Lombok, Komodo and Flores with Java, Sulawesi and more remote eastern islands, creating the possibility of voyages substantially different from conventional city-to-city Asian cruises.
Benoa is Indonesia’s big infrastructure test
The most visible evidence of Indonesia’s cruise ambitions is at Benoa Port in Bali. Pelindo has expanded Benoa’s turning basin to 580 meters, dredged navigation areas to a depth of minus 12 meters MLWS and widened the navigation channel to 200 meters.
Those improvements enabled the port in February 2025 to accommodate Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas , a 348-meter vessel of approximately 167,800 gross tons. The significance goes beyond accommodating another large ship.
Indonesia wants Benoa to develop from a port-of-call destination into a cruise turnaround and ultimately homeport location. Homeporting is economically more valuable because passengers can stay in hotels before or after a cruise, use airports and ground transportation, eat in restaurants and purchase supplies locally. Ships themselves require provisioning, fuel, technical services, waste handling and crew support.
But Benoa also illustrates Indonesia’s larger infrastructure problem.
Modern cruise tourism requires far more than a deep berth. Immigration and customs processing, baggage handling, buses and taxis, road capacity, potable water, waste reception, sewage treatment, reliable electricity and shore-power systems all become increasingly important as vessels carrying several thousand passengers arrive.
Indonesia’s geography compounds that challenge. Developing one sophisticated terminal in Bali is comparatively straightforward. Creating consistently high standards across a network stretching thousands of kilometers from Sumatra to Papua is considerably harder.
Green ports versus a carbon-intensive industry
Professor Ni Made Eka Mahadewi of Bali Tourism Polytechnic has argued that Indonesia’s marine-tourism strategy should include development of “Green and Smart Ports,” better integration between ports and destinations, and stronger participation by communities sharing coastal resources.
The environmental issue could become the most difficult part of Indonesia’s cruise expansion.
Pelindo and state electricity company PLN have already announced green-port initiatives, including plans for shore electricity infrastructure. Shore power allows vessels equipped for it to switch off auxiliary engines while berthed and obtain electricity from land, reducing local exhaust emissions, noise and fuel consumption around ports.
In 2026, Pelindo also announced that land in the Benoa area would be prepared for a waste-to-energy facility as part of a wider government waste-management initiative. Yet calling a port “green” does not eliminate the environmental footprint of cruise tourism.
Large vessels generate emissions while sailing, require significant energy, create wastewater and solid waste, and can concentrate thousands of visitors at environmentally sensitive destinations within hours.
Indonesia has particular reason to proceed cautiously because many of the places it wants cruise passengers to experience — coral reefs, mangroves, small islands and national parks — are precisely the ecosystems most vulnerable to unmanaged tourism growth.
Bali also carries historical baggage over coastal development.
Expansion and reclamation around Benoa previously generated substantial community opposition. In 2019 Bali Governor Wayan Koster ordered Pelindo III to stop reclamation work after saying 17 hectares of mangrove forest had been damaged. The broader Benoa Bay reclamation controversy had already produced a major Balinese social movement opposing development perceived as threatening ecological and cultural resources.
That history means environmental assurances surrounding future maritime development are likely to receive close scrutiny.
Komodo demonstrates the carrying-capacity dilemma
The dilemma becomes even sharper around destinations such as Komodo National Park and Labuan Bajo.
Cruise tourism can deliver passengers with relatively high spending power directly into eastern Indonesia, supporting guides, boat operators, restaurants, souvenir producers, transport providers and accommodation businesses. But Komodo’s value comes from scarcity and conservation, not mass visitation.
Research examining tourism policy in Labuan Bajo has highlighted concerns about equitable distribution of tourism benefits and argues for stronger community participation, community-based tourism and environmental conservation.
This creates a fundamental policy question for Indonesia. Success cannot simply mean putting increasingly large numbers of cruise passengers ashore at environmentally fragile locations.
At some destinations, limiting daily arrivals, staggering shore excursions, controlling anchoring, regulating waste and directing passengers toward community-owned businesses may ultimately create more long-term economic value than maximizing passenger numbers.
Will local Indonesians receive the money?
Cruise advocates emphasize the sector’s ability to create employment and business opportunities. The regional numbers demonstrate why governments are interested.
An economic assessment commissioned by Cruise Lines International Association and produced by Tourism Economics, in partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board, estimated that cruise tourism generated US$10 billion in total economic output across Southeast Asia in 2024, contributed approximately US$4.5 billion to GDPand supported around 530,000 jobs.
Cruise-linked spending across the region was estimated at US$5.6 billion. Indonesia has a chance to capture more of that economy. But cruise passenger numbers alone are a poor measurement of local benefit.
A passenger buying a locally guided excursion, eating at an independently owned restaurant and purchasing locally produced handicrafts creates a very different economic footprint from a passenger taking a vertically integrated excursion arranged through an international cruise company and returning aboard for meals.
Indonesia therefore needs to measure local economic retention, not simply arrivals.
The country’s broader tourism-development experience suggests that infrastructure and community investment can work together. A World Bank-supported Indonesian tourism program reported improved water and sanitation infrastructure, training for more than 18,000 participants from tourism villages, more than 20,000 businesses establishing an online presence and hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment.
Applying similar principles to cruise tourism would mean training local guides, developing community-owned excursions, improving village access, supporting fishermen and artisans entering the visitor economy, and ensuring small businesses can sell directly to passengers.
Local feedback cannot be an afterthought
Community acceptance may prove as important as port capacity. Indonesia has already experienced tourism conflicts in which residents questioned whether large development projects were protecting local interests.
The anti-reclamation movement in Benoa demonstrated how environmental protection can become intertwined with Balinese culture and identity. In Labuan Bajo, researchers have similarly argued that tourism planning needs stronger mechanisms for community participation and more equitable benefit sharing.
For cruise tourism, that means communities should participate before terminals and shore-excursion systems are designed — rather than being asked for support after major investment decisions have already been made.
Fishermen need continued access to coastal waters. Local transport operators need opportunities to serve passengers. Villages need mechanisms to participate in excursion revenue. Residents also need to see tangible improvements in sanitation, roads, waste collection and public facilities rather than watching infrastructure built principally for visitors.
Without that social contract, rapid cruise growth could encounter the same resistance already associated with overtourism and large tourism developments elsewhere.
Singapore and Malaysia are not standing still
Indonesia is also entering an increasingly competitive Southeast Asian cruise market.
Its biggest structural competitor is Singapore.
Singapore surpassed two million cruise passengers in 2023 and has spent years building an ecosystem combining modern terminals, extensive air connectivity, hotels, logistics and cruise-line relationships. The Singapore Tourism Board describes the country as a regional cruise hub and is actively working with neighboring ASEAN destinations to develop new itineraries.
Malaysia is becoming more aggressive as well.
Port Klang has secured homeport operations, while Penang has been strengthening its cruise position around Swettenham Pier Cruise Terminal. Penang authorities projected approximately 679,809 cruise passengers for 2025 and were targeting substantial further growth in 2026.
Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines add further competition for ship deployments and passenger spending.
Yet cruise tourism creates an unusual form of rivalry.
Indonesia competes with neighboring countries for homeports, investment and passenger spending, but it also needs those countries. Cruise lines sell itineraries rather than isolated ports, meaning an attractive Singapore–Malaysia–Thailand–Indonesia network can make the entire region more commercially viable.
Indonesia’s strongest competitive advantage may therefore not be replacing Singapore as Southeast Asia’s primary cruise hub.
It may be offering something Singapore cannot: an enormous collection of distinctive islands and marine environments that can keep passengers inside Indonesia for multiple port calls.
The challenge is value, not volume
Speakers at the Indonesia Marine and Cruise Tourism Conference emphasized harmonized tariffs, improved digital navigation, friendlier maritime policies and closer integration of cruise ports with destinations.
Professor Michail Toanoglou offered perhaps the most important measurement for Indonesia’s strategy: the future of cruise tourism should not be judged simply by how many ships or visitors arrive, but by the lasting value tourism creates for destinations.
That is the real test now facing Indonesia.
The country possesses extraordinary raw material for marine tourism. It has thousands of islands, globally recognized biodiversity, major cultural destinations, experienced tourism workers and a strategic location between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
It is also operating in one of the fastest-developing cruise regions in the world. But faster growth alone will not guarantee success.
Leave a Comment