N

o one would doubt the key role of K-Pop as part of the Korean wave in promoting the country, its culture and tourist industry to the world. A number of the Korean bands have become the idols of millions of youths across the globe, including in Indonesia.

Inspired by this great success, the Jakarta government has appointed girl band JKT48 to be the city'€™s tourism ambassador. The group, a local franchise of prominent Japanese idol group AKB48, will take up the noble job of helping the city government increase tourist arrivals, which stood at 2.13 million last year.

Jakarta Culture and Tourism Agency head Arie Budhiman said JKT48 was deliberately selected as Jakarta would target Japanese tourists, whose number has continuously declined over the last few years. According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), foreign tourist arrivals reached 8.8 million last year, with over 491,000 from Japan.

The BPS data also found the total number of foreign tourists in Jakarta reached nearly 174,000 as of July 2014. China ranked first with 17,211 visitors and Japan second with 14,455. Japan is among the top-five markets for Indonesian tourism, after Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and China. The largest number of Japanese tourist arrivals occurred in 2008 with 546,713 people. No wonder the Jakarta tourism agency has set its sight on Japan, a large market thanks to its economic size, which has apparently not been explored sufficiently.

Founded only in 2011, the cute, young girl band JKT48 has quite a big fan base in Jakarta and elsewhere, and its link to Japan'€™s AKB48 will surely help bridge the Japanese and Indonesian people culturally.

There is nothing wrong with choosing the girl band to market Jakarta'€™s tourism, but as South Korea'€™s success story has taught us, there were concerted efforts from both the state and private sector to promote its pop culture worldwide first before it could propel its tourist industry. We, therefore, hope that the Jakarta administration and the central government will work hand-in-hand to promote Indonesian pop culture and new idols, who will help accelerate the growth of national tourism, if we are to emulate South Korea or Japan.

The Jakarta and central governments may also seek the services of Indonesian pop idols who are already globally acknowledged, like Anggun C. Sasmi and Agnez Mo, to promote Indonesian tourism. Apart from traditional cultures, the conventional and probably most significant asset to attracting foreign tourists, pop culture, has developed into an inseparable element of the country'€™s promotion of its tourism.

The inclusion of Indo-Pop into the promotional tourism package will not only expand the market to young tourists from across the world, but it will also help the industry survive competition.

Certainly, we need to work harder, and the emergence of Indo-Pop, which is recognized globally, could be an important factor.

Promoting tourism, however, will require all stakeholders to conserve tourist attractions, including by refraining from littering, and create a favorable environment for visitors from around the world.