T

he government has invited more Taiwanese to explore Indonesia beyond top tourist spot Bali Island, by promoting the less popular Morotai Island in North Maluku and Singkawang, West Kalimantan instead.

Four times the size of Singapore, the 245,000-hectare Morotai lies between Asia and Australia. Inhabited by around 72,000 people, it offers great potential for tourism, fisheries and manufacturing industries.

“I would like to invite Taiwanese investors to invest in Morotai due to its proximity to Taiwan, only a three-hour flight, and historical ties between Morotai and Taiwan,” Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said in his remarks during the 2017 Taiwan Tourism Workshop, recently.

The historical ties are linked to the presence of many Taiwanese soldiers in Morotai during World War II.

Among them was Teruo Nakamura, a Taiwan-born soldier of the imperial Japanese army. From Morotai, Nakamura fought during the war and did not surrender until 1974.

Representatives from the Taipei Economic and Trade Office (TETO) visited and observed the island recently, while an Indonesian delegation also met its Taiwanese counterpart to discuss possibilities for future collaboration.

The regional government has prepared 1,200-ha to lure investment, of which 200-ha was purchased by a big investor with a plan to build a theme park starting from this year, Arief said.

The keen investor was committed to spending Rp 20 trillion (US$1.5 billion) for multi-year projects, of which Rp 1.3 trillion would be disbursed this year, he added.

“The theme park will be like Disneyland, Legoland or Universal Studios,” Arief said.

The government’s push for more Taiwanese visits comes after the number of Taiwanese tourists dropped slightly to 209,000 last year from 211,000 in 2015. It aims to lure this year 284,000 tourists from the East Asian state, up 35.9 percent from the past year.

To support the target, the government vows to spur infrastructure development in Morotai, including by improving aircraft runways. It has also called on international flight carrier China Airlines to open direct flights from Taiwan to Morotai.

In addition to Morotai, the Tourism Ministry is promoting Singkawang, the home to a large pool of Chinese-Indonesians, as the main destination for Taiwanese visits.

The tourism minister pointed out that around 30,000 Indonesian females were married to Taiwanese males, many of which had lived in Singkawang. However, the majority of tourists only crowded the city during Chinese festivities, such as during the Lunar New Year and Cap Go Meh festivity, which occurs on the 15th day of the first month of the lunar year.

“A big investor has shown interest in coming here to build a tourist attraction in Singkawang,” he said, adding that it was intended to lure at least the 30,000 Indonesians that had married Taiwanese.

Taiwanese Tourism Bureau director Tony Wu said that apart from the language barrier, Indonesia was still considered a “new” tourist destination for Taiwanese. Therefore, he encourages the government to promote the country’s tourism more aggressively in Taiwan.

TETO chief John Chen, meanwhile, also invited Indonesians to visit Taiwan to enjoy its beautiful natural scenery. Taiwan, he added, had a Muslim-friendly environment as proven by the existence of many halal restaurants there.

Ministry data shows that the number of Indonesians who visited Taiwan last year rose 6.21 percent to 188,000 from 2015.