J

akarta is an exciting metropolis. As a destination, it mostly attracts exhibition and conference visitors, and shoppers who revel in its countless malls. What visitors often overlook is Jakarta’s rich cultural heritage and history, which goes back beyond the Dutch colonial era.

Making more of its old town, Kota Tua, arguably its most important heritage tourism asset, will be key to changing this. Heritage tourism has become a major source of income for many cities around the world and is rapidly gaining in economic importance. Setting up a heritage trail to better connect its old town and promoting it online would be the logical first step toward realizing Jakarta’s full heritage tourism potential.

If you have spent a couple of days in Jakarta as a tourist or business traveler, you might have been to Fatahillah Square, the centerpiece of Old Batavia in West Jakarta. The chance that you have visited the area around Sunda Kelapa, the city’s old port in North Jakarta, is much slimmer.

Sunda Kelapa receives 80 percent less visitors than Fatahillah Square, despite being only a short walk away. The main reason is that, if you are walking around Fatahillah Square, you will likely be unaware that the old town extends all the way to Sunda Kelapa. Even if you have read about it in a guidebook, you will find it difficult to get there without taking a taxi, because it is cut off from the rest of Kota Tua by a railway line and the inner ring road.

The pedestrian-unfriendly design of the space between the two sites makes walking difficult, if no clear directions are given. As a result, most visitors skip the northern part of Kota Tua, which is not only home to the old port and the maritime museum, but also to the historic Luar Batang Mosque.

Unless the two areas are properly connected, Jakarta and especially North Jakarta will miss out on an important economic development opportunity. The fact that the two areas are also divided by an administrative border poses an additional challenge for integrated urban development, but the long-term ambition must be to bring the two parts together in one attractive and walkable urban space.

The logical first step toward this goal is to set up a heritage trail guiding visitors from Fatahillah Square to Sunda Kelapa along a series of interesting historic and cultural sites. These could include the former Heerenstraat, the historic warehouses (Graanpakhuizen) and Kampong Tongkol.

In practice, the sites would be linked by a small number of markers or signposts, complemented by more in-depth information online. The trail would also be advertised online to reach as many potential visitors as possible.

A large share of all travel is now planned and booked on the internet. People base their choice of destinations and activities increasingly on online sources, such as travel review sites, social networks and blogs. A well designed and implemented digital marketing campaign can give a destination like North Jakarta global reach and increase its chances of becoming an economic success, especially when addressing a specific segment of the travel market such as heritage tourism.

This could mean creating an e-brochure that could be shared on the various digital marketing platforms, launching a special web application on the heritage trail and working with opinion leaders in social networks and travel bloggers.

Heritage trails are a tried and tested concept that, if well-designed and communicated, can make a real difference for tourism and require much less financial effort than infrastructure projects. Such trails are already a success in places like Singapore and Brisbane.

Setting up a trail that connects the two halves of Kota Tua would be a quick and affordable first step toward bringing more visitors to North Jakarta, as analyzed by our research team that also included Nadia Monira Mohamed Taib and Serene Lim Chien.

This will help balance the economic structure of North Jakarta, which is predominantly industrial, and create additional jobs for residents. It will also encourage the community to feel proud of the area they live in, thus wanting to participate and contribute to making North Jakarta a culturally vibrant place. As to the sustainability aspect, the Heritage Trail project is a low-key intervention. As such, it is nonintrusive and unlikely to affect the life of the area’s residents in a negative way.

If Jakarta is serious about becoming a world-class tourist destination, Kota Tua needs to be put back together in one piece. This will boost tourism and create economic opportunities and employment, especially in North Jakarta. However, progress toward this goal has been slow.

For the time being, the old town remains cut off from its maritime roots. Creating a heritage trail that will entice more visitors to come to the Sunda Kelapa area is the logical first step, while working toward the long-term goal of one Kota Tua.
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The writers are MPA candidates at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. The focus of their research project is on sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products.