Regarding digital tourism, Tourism Minister Arief Yahya reportedly said that today's market had changed because of a change in travelers' lifestyles. "About 63 percent of travel service transactions were conducted online; if travel agents don't quickly adapt to digital, they could end up like wartel [public phone booths]," he said, adding that about 70 percent of foreign tourists also utilize digital media to search for and share travel-related matters.

The ministry's digital tourism program will kick off with the launch of a marketplace platform named the Indonesia Tourism Exchange (ITX) that aims to offer transaction space for buyers and sellers like travel agents, accommodation providers and attractions. "Accessible via smartphone, customers can easily book a hotel, flight, homestay, or attraction across Indonesia."

(Read also: Travel agents, airlines told to offer government's 10 tourist destinations)

Meanwhile, the tourist village homestay program is part of the ministry's support for the government's 1 million houses program for low- and middle-income residents. It reportedly would contribute by developing 100,000 homestays with the tourist village concept by 2019. "We are set to build 20,000, 30,000 and 50,000 homestays in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively."

Last year, the ministry held a tourist village homestay design competition from which the winners' ideas will be used as the design model for homestays in 10 priority destinations.

As for air accessibility, about 80 percent of foreign tourists visited the archipelago via air transportation, thus the number of airline seats is key to reach the target of tourist arrivals. Arief said that the current availability of 19.5 million seats by Indonesian and foreign airlines was only enough to accommodate 12 million foreign tourists in 2016. (kes)

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