Australians are voicing their abhorrence at the executions of the Bali 9 duo but Qantas and Webjet say travellers show no sign of boycotting popular tourist destinations in Indonesia such as Bali.
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In fact, they continue to fly to Bali in record numbers.
While the Abbott government made the unprecedented decision on Wednesday to withdraw its ambassador to Indonesia in protest at the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, online travel agency Webjet said demand from Australians for flights to Bali had risen by 42 per cent over the last four weeks compared with the same period a year earlier.
The strong demand comes despite Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop warning two months ago that Australians may be moved to boycott Indonesia if the executions of the convicted drug couriers went ahead.
However, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said on Wednesday that the airline had not seen any evidence of customers boycotting Indonesia.
"It's a personal decision what people decide to do and how people accept their views. Some people are obviously annoyed at the [Indonesian] government's decisions. [But] there are a lot of people that are not upset with the people of Indonesia," he said on the sidelines of a National Press Club luncheon in Canberra.
Mr Joyce said the company would keep a close watch on whether demand on Jetstar flights would be affected over the coming weeks.
"But at the moment there are no signs of any impact and our expectation is there probably won't be a significant impact on those operations," he said.
Webjet chief executive John Guscic said there was often a low correlation between political events and the booking habits of Australian travellers.
"Whenever there has been a political event historically, if there is a period of suppressed bookings, it picks up very quickly and reverts to the underlying performance of the market," he said on Wednesday.
"In this case, there has been significant publicity about the fate of the Bali 9 and it hasn't impacted bookings to Bali over that period."
Mr Guscic said it appeared that Australian travellers separated the Indonesian people from a decision of their country's judiciary or government.
In the immediate aftermath of the Bali bombings in October 2002, bookings for flights to the Indonesian holiday destination dropped, but had rebounded sharply within six months.
"There clearly was an impact back then, and it was substantial at the time, but we are not seeing that in this case," he said.
Bali is the most popular overseas destination for people who use Webjet to book their holidays.
Mr Guscic said Bali had been a proxy for Webjet's underlying growth in demand for international flights.
The listed online travel company also reported a 37 per cent rise in bookings for flights to Bali in the six months to December.
Qantas' budget offshoot, Jetstar, Virgin Australia, Malaysia's AirAsia and Indonesian flag carrier Garuda compete vigorously on routes from Australia to the popular island destination.
The Perth-Bali route is among the top-10 busiest air links from Australia.
The number of passengers carried on airlines flying Perth-Bali rose almost 3 per cent to 881,000 in the year to January, the latest government traffic statistics show.
A Jetstar spokesman said forward bookings for flights to Bali remained steady.
