Jack Daniels is the director of Bali Discovery Tours, a destination management company which specializes in organizing national and international events for Bali’s MICE industry. But he is perhaps better known as the publisher of the award-winning weekly email newsletter Bali Update, once dubbed “Bali’s Truth Ministry” by TIME Magazine for its factual, data-based and logical approach to issues.
What started out as a series of short emails reassuring a few friends and business colleagues about Bali has evolved over a period of five years into a voraciously read say-it-like-it-is news sheet sent to over 15,000 subscribers around the world. Now Bali Update consumes all of Jack’s weekends in order to meet a self-imposed Monday morning deadline.
Jack habitually scours the local Indonesian and English press, devouring up 5 newspapers a day, does telephone interviews, and his well-placed friends working in hotels and various tourist-related businesses and art galleries keep him in the loop by sending regular information on events and happenings.
From the very first Bali Update published in March of 1998, there have been 375 issues to date, the archive amounting to a roundup of the whole Bali travel scene since 1998. In the early days of Indonesia's political and social crisis, updates were going out every several days the reason why the number of editions outnumber the number of weeks since that first edition.
In recent issues Jack has covered such diverse topics as the controversial new visa policy, a new air service to Bali, Intra-ASEAN barriers to tourism, news of a tragic bus accident, an award given to Indonesian cops, projected tourist arrival numbers in 2004, announcements of a cigar and wine evening, the installment of SARS scanners at the airport, and a riveting discussion on the irksome habit of “friendly” foreign governments posting travel warnings against coming to Bali.
Graduating from Michigan State University in 1975, Jack was just another midwest college boy living in probably the furthest possible point on the planet physically, climactically and culturally - from the Indonesian archipelago.
While at MSU, Jack studied law, philosophy and Southeast Asian Studies. His early interest in this part of the world can be attributed to the fact that his mother was Australian and there were members of her family who had worked in the early 1900’s in the region as engineers and academics. He was also introduced to Southeast Asia by an enthusiastic College professor. Three decades later, Jack is still smitten with the region.
Despite having to work to help support his family and put himself through school he graduated Magna Cum Laude, then went on to work variously as a bartender, mortician’s assistant and professional radio news announcer for a 100,000 watt radio station. Since his arrival in Indonesia in 1977, the former paperboy from Michigan has at one time or the other tried his hand at a wide spectrum of enterprises found in the country’s tourism and travel industry.
In the early 1980s, Jack’s first total immersion in the Indonesia work force was as a Northwest Airlines division general manager, then he did a stint as director of sales & marketing for a luxury hotel in Jakarta. These were the golden days when the capital’s hoteliers were minor celebrities in their own right, hosts to the city’s best restaurants and regularly introducing leading musical acts and fashion shows put on by the world’s top designers. Hotels in those days were routinely averaging occupancy rates of 100%.
For 15 years, starting in the mid-1980s, Jack was the managing director of Spice Island Cruises, Indonesia’s first international-standard cruise operation. He remembers one cruise contracted by Sports Illustrated to shoot top models for their Swimsuit Edition. On another occasion, his ship saved a group of Alor whale hunters who had been adrift without food and water for nearly a week. Then there was the time he assisted a group of scientists collecting saliva and blood samples from live Komodo Dragons to be used in medical research.
This was not his only contact with rare and deadly beasts. In the 1990s, he coordinated the donation of Varanus komodoensis lizards to the Cincinnati Zoo and, in return, the transfer of two rare white tigers to the Jakarta Zoo. His most vivid memory was flying halfway around the world from Chicago to Jakarta feeding, watering and trying to soothe two caged tigers in the dark noisy cargo section of a KLM aircraft. He’s certain that living through that experience is the reason why he only keeps dogs and never cats in his house in Bali.
On the 19th of November, in acknowledgement of his many years promoting, preserving and pricking Bali's tourism establishment, Jack was one of only 12 people selected to receive the prestigious Karyakarana Pariwisata Award for 2003.
Jack Daniels can be contacted via jack@balidiscovery.com, or you subscribe to his free newsletter via Bali Discovery’s website at www.balidiscovery.com, one of Bali’s most comprehensive travel sites attracting around 100,000 visitors a month.
