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Editorial: Visit Indonesia Year?
Wed, 03/12/2008 1:36 AM | Opinion
What an unfortunate year for Indonesia's tourism industry. Less than one month after the government declared 2008 Visit Indonesia Year, flooding crippled Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, the main gateway to the country, early last month.
Last week, the second annual Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2008, by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, downgraded Indonesia as a tourist destination to 80th among 130 countries surveyed. That was much worse than its position last year, which was 60th out of 124 countries.
The report showed that Indonesia scored very poorly in health and hygiene due to an inadequate supply of hospital beds, poor access to sanitation and drinking water and an acutely low number of qualified physicians.
The country also performed badly in that other pillar of the tourism industry -- infrastructure. In fact, Indonesian airplanes have been banned from European airspace since last year and no progress has been made on getting this blanket ban lifted.
Indonesia scored high only in terms of natural resources, with several World Heritage natural sites and the richness of it flora and fauna, and price competitiveness. But these strengths were undermined by such major weaknesses as underdeveloped infrastructure, including air and ground transportation.
There are even great concerns related to safety, particularly the prevalence of road accidents.
No wonder Indonesia, though richly endowed with a wide variety of cultures and interesting sites, has remained among the least popular tourist destinations even in the Southeast Asian region, outranked by Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Last year, Indonesia received just around 5.5 million tourists, compared to more than 9 million arrivals in Malaysia and almost 20 million in Singapore.
The survey showed the top-ranked countries in the travel and tourism industry -- Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Australia, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, Canada and France -- understand the importance of support businesses and regulatory frameworks, coupled with world-class transportation and tourism infrastructure and a focus on nurturing human and natural resources.
Countries have vastly different underlying operational conditions, depending on where they fall in the tourism development spectrum. All have unique tourism products to offer, but the central goal is to encourage improvement in the underlying competitive conditions and infrastructure.
This is again where Indonesia is fundamentally weak, even in nature-based tourism, where the country should have a strong comparative advantage.
This latest travel and tourism report from the World Economic Forum should serve as a strong wake-up call for us, especially the government, to reinvigorate the tourism industry, especially now in the midst of a weakening global economy and uncertainty in the international financial market.
International tourism is known as a resilient industry, never suffering a deep and lasting recession and able to recover quickly because the need to travel, whether for business or leisure, is so deeply ingrained in our societies.
As a resource-based industry, tourism is also an ideal business for Indonesia to develop because of its multiplier effect and the labor-intensive nature of its operations. It directly benefits local communities economically. Travel businesses do their best when they use the local workforce, services, products and supplies.
The tourism industry also supports the integrity of a place. Destination-savvy travelers seek out businesses that emphasize the character of a locale. Tourism revenue in turn raises the perceived value of those assets.
Travel-related businesses such as hotels, restaurants, transportation, handicrafts and cultural shows are all labor intensive, the very kind of enterprises needed to absorb the huge pool of job seekers here.
But it is precisely because of its multi-sectoral activities that the promotion of the tourism industry should involve not only the tourism ministry but all other state and private organizations that provide the basic infrastructure and public services, including immigration, customs, transportation, accommodation and security.
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Lampu (not verified) — Mon, 05/26/2008 - 4:03am
the government put ads within the country to attract domestic tourists as well. tourism is not about foreigners visiting our country, it is also to encourage people like you and I to check out other cultures within our country.
and second, what they do in other countries is what you havent seen. so thats why you think they havent done much. look it up.
they did a lot of things. there are exhibitions held in many countries in europe to introduce indonesia. you just dont know.
and people tend to complain when they dont know.
it is good to be somewhat skeptical. but your skepticism should encourage you to learn more instead of getting angry and making yourself look foolish.
i have been travelling and yes, i do see that the program is lacking a lot of things. it is not perfect, but the idea of doing the campaign is a good enough start, for now.
Lampu (not verified) — Mon, 05/26/2008 - 3:57am
First i would like to explain to all of you here, that what the writer is talking about and what the government is doing is the Visit Indonesia 2008, not Visit Jakarta 2008.
unfortunately, most commenters seem to have not much experience in seeing other parts of indonesia.
get out of jakarta and you will notice the difference in clean air. get out of Java and you will notice how quiet it can get in other parts of indonesia.
There ARE nice places in Indonesia. many more compare to all of the SE countries.
there are many reasons why the tourist count is low, some are mentioned on the article and often talked about, i wont dwell on that. but there are two things that i would like to point out is that our location is not strategic for traveling and the second is lack of promotion.
when people go to thailand for example, it is easy for them to travel around and visit the other countries around it. same with malaysia. they dont need to fly from one place to another. easy access is what it is.
notice that there are many people who come from the western countries and when they travel to asia, most of the times, they dont just focus on one country. after the long flight from where they are from, they want to see as much Asia all at once, or get glimpses of a few that they can get to within their limited time. sometimes they even play it by ear "maybe i will stay in thailand for another 2 3 days and will go to burma tomorrow or work my way down to malaysia..."
but when people want to catch a glimpse of indonesia as part of their hop around asia tour, they have to take a specific flight to come here. they cant just take a ferry or catch a few hour bus ride. and thats why usually they dont end up far enough down here.
many tourists who visit indonesia actually specifically plan on visiting indonesia, instead of just stopping by to catch a glimpse of what indonesia is like.
in travellers point of view, especially for backpackers, indonesia is like its own continent. we are almost like not a part of asia.
many people who end up coming here to check it out for a few days as part of their hop around asia tour tend to say "man there is so much here, i will have to come again and stay longer if i want to see it.", some say "i wish i knew" or "i wish i have more time.."
Many people dont know what indonesia is all about. When they dont know, they feel too foreign to visit. it is much easier to visit thailnd, for example. their tourism is known throughout the world. they heard poeple coming and going and they already know what it has to offer. the industry is set up already. Thai tourism is promoted much much more compare to indonesian tourism. just google thailand and you will see gazillion sites for tourists.
thats what Visit Indonesia 2008 is all about. it is to introduce us so they know what we are and they will choose to come straight here and travel around the country.
you can do singapore in one day. you can do malaysia in a week but, you can do thailand in 2 weeks, but you cant do indonesia in even a month.
I support the campaign. really hope that the campaign fund is used towards what it needs.
and as indonesians, we can help promoting our tourism if we ourself try to learn more about our country, check out the natural beauty around us, accept the diversity and embrace it and send a positive message about us. be proud!
The Reader (not verified) — Mon, 05/19/2008 - 9:12pm
It is exactly the kind of defensive comment like the one posted by Judhi Hariwibowo that gets Indonesia into trouble. Didn't the person say already that he'd leave if he had a choice? Why should we be defensive everytime someone criticizes Indonesia?
We don't improve. Instead, we bury our heads in the sand, asking everyone to treat us with respect without providing anything in return. That tactic is working, by the way, as shown by our dismal tourism figure. Great work!
Mass comm student (not verified) — Sat, 05/17/2008 - 7:11pm
Visit Indonesia Year is POORLY ORGANIZED!! it is fruitless spend millions of money for advertising the program locally.,,,currently i am studying in malaysia,, and i have never seen the advertisement broadcasted on tv, radio, and i could hardly see any banner state "VISIT INDONESIA''...
and i start questioning my self "WHAT IS THE PROGRAM ACTUALLY?"
no unique selling point
no preparation >> poor infrastructure, promotion, planning
etcetera...
is the government launch teh program FOR THE SAKE OF LAUNCHING,, BETTER THAN NO PROGRAM TO LAUCNH?????????????
Andries Sibarani (not verified) — Fri, 05/09/2008 - 12:18pm
It's apparent that "Visit Indonesia Year 2008" was poorly planned, no marketing research and campaign done properly in the preceding years. Those high-ranking officials at the Ministry of Tourism seemed not knowing what to do. They thought that by launching VIY2008, tourists will automatically flock in and crowd places of interest in this country.
What's the use of doing heavy campaign IN Indonesia? Shouldn't be it done elsewhere, in other parts of the world? When Malaysia launched its "Truly Asia" campaign, the commercials were broadcast worldwide on highly respected and popular TV channels.
What's the theme of VIY2008? It's "Celebrating 100 years of nation's awakening", isn't it? International visitors would think "what the heck"! They want to see what are the things they will experience that they won't experience elsewhere. So the keyword here is "uniqueness"!
While Malaysian Tourism has been successfully defined Malaysia as "Truly Asia", what's left for Indonesia? We may say, "Indonesia, the Emerald of the Equator" or something like that. But slogan is slogan, what's IN IT is much more important!
A.Mulders (not verified) — Mon, 04/14/2008 - 6:59pm
Is there nobody in Indonesia whom starts to think carefully why Malaysia attracks nearly 19 Million tourist a year, Singapore (a single city-country) attracks 9 million tourist a year, Thailand attracks also millions of tourist and Indonesia only 5 Million tourist.
This must have a certain reason!!!! The country is unsafe, dirthy, bad infrastructure and there is more anarchy than law.
Who will visit a country where your life is not safe and where you have to climb first over a mountain of rubbish before you can see the beauty the country has. NOBODY !!!!!!
The Reader: Gary Hern (not verified) — Sun, 04/13/2008 - 10:19am
Your new visa policy caught my eye and a very interesting article on banning pornography. Being from USA, I had no idea this could be done. I have mentioned to MSN, AOL, and Yahoo that their search engines are now the largest producers of pornography in the world! Perhaps you can threaten these providers of search engines that in fact are the facilitatiors of viewing on line pornography.
Sorry to here about you tourist industry has droped, the rains will stop, beauty has to be promoted with excitement, planned group rates and packaged deals to draw a world of tourring to your
style of life.
If you have a different gem that can be advertised, a perfect picture that someone can get involved with it's unique individual satisfaction then the world will come. Food, hospitality, visual aspirations, that something different that can be mine for keeps at a low price -- yet priceless. They'll come!
Suprayogi, bandung (not verified) — Fri, 03/28/2008 - 9:39pm
the program of visit Indonesia 2008 is a great hope for Indonesia society to have a bright future of tourism in Indonesia, especially for the significant increasing of visitor's number who want to see the beauty of indonesia.
In fact now that the program has been criticized by a lot of people.especially in the term of promotion budget and the preparation of the program.
i see that what the government spend for promoting Indonesian culture and tourism to entire Indonesia and overseas is not effective. why, because we haven't see the the significant result there. if the gov still spend it in inappropriate way, it means the gov are not care about other side who need the money. billions rupiah of this is just for making billboard and place it everywhere, making website, and so on, oh gie, it cant attract the visitors in the first sight.
the first that should be though is the preparation and the readiness of each region, then the loyalty of society that should be very welcome and friendly. then the safety too
i ihink it will be better to make a new program VISIT INDONESIA 2009.
John (not verified) — Fri, 03/28/2008 - 1:10am
I support any tourist enhancement programs that Indonesia may offer. Jakarta and the rest of the country have some great places to visit and have a fun vacation. After having lived in Indonesia for eight years I can tell you that there are so many places to see that a person would need more than two years of just traveling in order to see them all.
Lets not be so critical of the government and the country. Instead, take some time to remind people that there are still so many places of natural beauty to see in Indonesia and the people are very friendly and warm.
I support "Visit Indonesia 2008" and I hope I can visit this year.
Dr. Gautam K Jha (not verified) — Tue, 03/25/2008 - 12:46am
It’s pathetic to know that Indonesia still posts a negligible number of tourists inflow even after proclaiming 2008 as 'Visit Indonesia Year' by the government. Indonesia has more tourists destinations based on a myriad of diverse geographical and cultural denominations. This proves that mere setting up the objectives nothing can be achieved unless genuine efforts are made. This is high time for Indonesia to realize the potentiality of its tourism market particularly when other ASEAN nations are enjoying the tourist influx.