Purbalingga ‘ready’ for museum campaign

With four museums already in operation, Purbalingga regency in Central Java is getting set to embrace the 2010 Visit Museum campaign launched recently by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Before the Puppet Museum and Science and Technology Museum were officially opened by Regent Triyono Budi Sasongko in December last year, the regency already had two others: the Numismatic Museum and the Reptile Museum.

“We’re lucky the campaign was launched nationwide when it was, because we’d prepared the same program here in the regency,” Agus Widyantoro, the PR manager for the regency’s Museum and Owabong tour package, said recently.

He added the four museums were located in the same general area within the subdistrict of Kutasari, making it easier and more efficient for tourists to visit all four having to travel much.

The Reptile Museum, Agus went on, featured various specimens, including rare ones, collected from all over the country.

The Numismatics Museum, meanwhile, offers visitors a veritable treasure trove of coins and banknotes from 183 countries.

“Most of them are part of the regency’s own collection,” Agus said.

In the Puppet Museum, visitors can take a close look at puppet collections from different regions in the country, and also have a go at performing in a puppet show.

“We’ve prepared the necessary facilities for this,” Agus said.

Similarly, in the Science and Technology Museum visitors can also get hands-on practice with the gadgets and gizmos on show.

Entry to all four museums will cost Rp 10,000.

“The challenge for us now is to optimize the tour package so get it in line with the President’s campaign,” Agus said.

He added so far the four museums were managed by the same group as the Owabong Water Park, which has been in operation for five years now.

“We had 1 million visitors to Owabong in 2009, which was a slight decrease from the previous year,” he said.

“We had 1.2 million visitors in 2008 and generated Rp 18 billion in income, or Rp 2 billion more than the income generated from Borobudur in Magelang, according to data from the provincial tourism agency.”

The growing number of tourist attractions in the province competing for visitors may have been the reason for the drop in the number of visitors to Owabong, Agus said.

The recreational park offers 11 large pools and 10 other water attractions.

Agus said at least 15 recreational parks of the same kind had either already gone into operation or were being developed across Central Java.

“With the additional four museums, we hope to make Owabong much more attractive for tourists to visit,” he said.