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Tourism sector still promising despite turbulent year
Foreign tourists standing near a souvenir stall in Bali
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Foreign tourists standing near a souvenir stall in Bali. The government aims to boost the number of foreign tourist arrivals by 12 million in 2016. (thejakartapost.com/Raditya Margi) (thejakartapost.com/Raditya Margi)
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span class="inline inline-center">Foreign tourists standing near a souvenir stall in Bali. The government aims to boost the number of foreign tourist arrivals by 12 million in 2016. (thejakartapost.com/Raditya Margi)
Despite a turbulent year with natural disasters throughout 2015, the government is upbeat about reaching its target of attracting 10 million foreign tourists by the end of December.
According to Tourism Minister Arief Yahya, the number of tourist arrivals reached a low point in June as land and forest fires disrupted activities in regions across the archipelago, including Batam, Jambi, Riau, North Sumatra and Central Kalimantan. The eruption of Mount Raung in East Java in July, meanwhile, forced at least five airports to suspend operations.
"Another low point came in November following the eruption of Mount Barujari [a sub-volcano of Mount Rinjani in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara], which later disrupted the operation of Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar," Arief told a press conference on Wednesday, adding that the temporary closure of airports had caused lost opportunities to welcome an extra 500,000 to 1 million foreign tourists to the country.
According to the latest report, 8,017,589 foreign tourist arrived between January and October 2015, an increase by 3.4 percent from to the same period last year. As for domestic tourists, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded 208 million journeys over the same period.
Arief said the tourism sector contributed significantly to the domestic economy and employed some 12.16 million workers. "In general, our tourism development policy was on track in 2015, so we have been able to achieve our targets."
Arief added that the growth of Indonesia's tourism industry in 2015 handily outperformed neighboring countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, which recorded stagnation or contraction.
"If we use other countries' popular destinations as a benchmark, we can easily see that the potential of tourism in Indonesia is huge yet hasn't been optimally tapped," said Arief.
Phuket in Thailand, for example, had been visited by 9.5 million foreigners this year. Penang in Malaysia and Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia welcomed up to 5.5 million and 1.7 million foreign visitors, respectively. Meanwhile, Bali received 4 million foreigners and only some 471,000 foreign visitors came to Borobudur, Prambanan and Ratu Boko temples in Central Java.
The free-visa policy applied to 174 countries this year as well as the clearance approval for Indonesian territory (CAIT) that aims to attract more yachts and cruises to Indonesian waters are expected to boost the number of foreign tourists next year by 12 million. The government is also set to conduct sales missions to countries in the Asia Pacific region, Europe, the Middle East and North America more frequently in 2016.
Arief asserted that the tourism sector was ready to welcome the implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) next year as it had prepared 28 tourism business standards, 1,500 tourism business standard auditors and 12 tourism-related Profession Certification Agencies.
"The tourism sector has been preparing for AEC for a long time. Since 2007, the ministry has issued 81,627 competency certifications to tourism-related workers," said Arief. (kes)
