Bali needs more Japanese and Chinese-speaking guides

Dicky Christanto , The Jakarta Post , Denpasar | Mon, 05/05/2008 11:26 AM | Bali

A tourism official says Bali needs more Japanese and Chinese-speaking guides since the island has seen a significant increase in tourists coming from those two countries this year.

"We need to arrange more short courses in Japanese and Chinese for our guides, and also we have to coordinate with the local administration to put up signs in Japanese and Chinese along with the existing languages," chairman of the Bali Tourism Board (BTB) Ngurah Wijaya told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

He said that of 8,000 certified local guides on the island, most could only speak English and some European languages.

"We need more people speaking those languages (Japanese and Chinese) to show that we mean business here," he said.

Chairman of the Association of Bali Guides, Made Sukadana, said the association was currently training new guides.

"We have two groups of new guides with some improvement made in their training. Another two are coming up," he added.

He said once the new guides finished the courses and were then certified, it would add around 1,000 fresh guides to the island's tourism industry.

The new guides are expected to be able to interact more smoothly with tourists given their training that is more comprehensive than the one undertaken by current guides.

"We give short courses on Russian, Japanese and Chinese languages in addition to ... English and French," he said.

The short courses consist of 96 meetings with two meetings held per week. Most of the teachers are also Indonesians who have mastered the foreign languages.

Many tourism experts say Russian tourists are currently eager to visit the Asia Pacific with the crude oil price soaring in the international market.

Wijaya said there was also a business opportunity since some Chinese tourists had asked for more restaurants serving Chinese cuisine.

"Some are still having difficulties with the local and international cuisines. Thus it is one of the business challenges we should quickly respond to," he said.

According to Bali Statistics Agency, as many as 447,566 foreign tourists -- with Japanese, Australian and Taiwanese remaining in the top three spots -- have visited the resort island in the first three months of this year, a 28.7 percent increase from last year's 347,816.

Antara quoted the head of distribution of the Bali Statistic Agency, Jam Jam Zamachsyari, as saying he was upbeat about the increase since the first three months of the year was always considered the low season.

He said the increase in visitation was made possible by, among other things, the Bali Police's efforts in maintaining security on the island.

Wijaya said he was optimistic Bali would pass the target of 1.7 million foreign tourists set earlier this year under the national program of Visit Indonesia Year 2008.

"We are optimistic of being able to attract around 2 million tourists to the island this year," he said.

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