European tourist arrivals in Indonesia unaffected by flight ban

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The ban by the European Aviation Authority for the Indonesian airlines to fly over its airspace does not affect the flow of European tourists arriving in Indonesia, a spokesman said.

"We do not see any impact of the ban on the flow of European tourists into Indonesia because in reality we have no airlines flying the European space," Central Board of Statistics (BPS) head Rusman Heriawan said on Monday.

He said that the European tourists came to Indonesia aboard foreign flights.

Citing as an example, Heriawan said that the number of British tourists arriving in Indonesia in July reached 12,083, or an increase by 11.83 percent compared with that of the previous month which totaled 10,805.

He said the same case also happened to the number of German tourists which increased 26.73 percent from 8,017 to 10,160 in June. Drastic increase happened to the number of Dutch tourist arrivals which rose 93.30 percent from 9,124 to 17,637.

The BPS chief said that the overall number of tourists arriving in Indonesia in July increased 16.31 percent to 423.5 thousands if compared with that in the same period in 2006. But if compared with that in the previous month (June), it rose 2.57 percent only.