Tourist arrival target achievable, says minister

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With a wide range of promotional programs both at home and abroad, the government is optimistic that the Visit Indonesia Year 2008 campaign will draw at least 7 million foreign tourists.

"I'm optimistic that we can reach the target and book US$6.4 billion in foreign exchange earnings, as we've done many campaign activities both domestically and internationally," Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik said at a year-end media conference on Thursday.

Indonesia will host over 100 international events ranging from cultural and musical to sports activities throughout the archipelago as part of Visit Indonesia Year 2008. The government has allocated up to US$15 million to finance the campaign.

Indonesia's first Visit Indonesia campaign in 1991 was not as successful as expected, adding just 400,000 tourists to the arrival total.

Jero said improving security conditions in the country were another factor that could help attract more foreign tourists.

"Thanks to this, we've seen an increase of foreign tourist arrivals this year, reaching 5.5 million tourists from 4.8 million in 2006, and generating about $5.3 billion in foreign exchange income," Jero said.

"And this year's tourist arrivals are the highest in the last 10 years," he said.

He explained that from January to October, the ministry recorded 3.7 million tourists, an increase of 14.24 percent over the 3.2 million notched in the same period last year. The 3.7 million tourists arrived through the 15 main entry gates, including the airports of Soekarno Hatta in Tangerang, Ngurah Rai in Bali, Polonia in Medan and Juanda in Surabaya.

In November and December, Indonesia has seen around 900,000 tourists entering Indonesia through those gates, he said.

Singaporeans still dominated Indonesia's tourist arrivals in the first 10 months, totaling almost 750,000, but down from 772,216 in the same period of last year.

They were followed by Malaysia with 463,517 visits, and Japan with almost 400,000.

The ministry estimated that in 2007, about 116 million local tourists took about 219 million trips, slightly increased from the 114 million people who took about 216 million trips in 2006.

They were estimated to have spent about Rp 79.8 trillion this year, up from Rp 78.9 trillion in 2006.

The minister said earlier that his office was also hoping more Chinese tourists would come to Indonesia next year to take advantages of the special offers provided by hotels and airlines during the year.

According to China's National Tourism Administration, nearly 30 million Chinese traveled abroad in the first nine months of this year, up by 17 percent from the same period last year. That means China remains Asia's largest source of tourists.(ndr/dic)