The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Fri, 12/31/2010
Indonesia will launch the new branding “Wonderful Indonesia” as part of its tourism campaign to attract up to 7.7 million foreign tourists next year.
Speaking at a yearend briefing in Jakarta Thursday, Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik said that with the new campaign brand, which would replace the previous “Visit Indonesia Year”, the target could be achieved.
The new catchphrase, he said, was much stronger than the previous one as it reflected the country’s beautiful nature, unique culture, varied food, hospitable people and price competitiveness in various kinds of services.
About 7 million foreign tourists visited Indonesia last year, an increase from 6.4 million in 2009.
“We expect each tourist will spend around US$1,100 and with an optimistic target of 7.7 million arrivals, we will get $8.3 billion,” he said, adding that 50 percent of the revenue would be generated from about 600 meetings, conventions and exhibitions that were expected to take place in various places throughout the country next year.
Wacik further explained that his ministry would also promote the country’s attractions under the eco-cultural banner.
“We picked this theme to cope with the trend that foreign tourists will choose eco-friendly tourist sites, hotels and services. All
tourism stakeholders, then, are expected to upkeep their environment,” he said.
Wacik pointed out that the Komodo National Park in West Nusa Tenggara, one of 28 finalists of the New Seven Wonders of Nature competition, as one of 15 prime tourist destinations to be promoted by the ministry next year.
“We’ll also continue our Visit Museum Year campaign. We’ll build a number of museums and revitalize existing museums,” he said without explaining further.
The director general for tourism destination development, Firmansyah Rahim, said his ministry planned to improve infrastructure facilities, mainly airports.
“We will widen runways at a number of airports to accommodate large aircraft,” he said.
Among the airports are Selangit in North Sumatra, Wakatobi in Southeast Sulawesi and Toraja in South Sulawesi.
He also said his ministry would develop about 560 tourism villages across the archipelago, adding to the current 200 sites and contributing to the 2,000 targeted by 2014.
The director of marketing development, Syamsul Lussa, said that to reach the targeted number of foreign tourists, his ministry still had to solve problems, such as aircraft capacity and immigration services.
Currently, airlines have 14.7 million aircraft seats for domestic as well as international tourists.
“Seventy percent of foreign tourists use air services to travel. We need an additional 1.7 million seats to carry 7.7 million tourists,” he said.
“We also lack counters for visa-on-arrival services because the planning of airports is not in line with the development of needs,” he added. (lnd)
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