Outbound travellers on the increase

JAKARTA: MasterIndex of Travel, a division of Mastercard International, predicted Wednesday that the number of Indonesian outbound travellers would increase by 2.6 percent to nearly two million people in the first half of 2006.

Based on the results of a recent survey, MasterIndex says that Indonesians are traveling more frequently, with 30 percent of business travellers stating they needed to travel more over the last 12 months compared to the previous period.

It also found that the favorite destinations of Indonesian travellers for both business and pleasure were Singapore (50 percent) and Malaysia (22 percent). As a business destination alone, Singapore still topped the list at 53 percent, followed by Malaysia (33 percent) and Japan (13 percent).

The favorite business airline was Garuda Indonesia (56 percent), followed by Singapore Airlines (19 percent) and China Airlines (3 percent). (03)