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ndonesia’s national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia will expand the airline’s Garuda Orient Holiday travel package program to several more countries, including Taiwan, in a bid to lure more foreign tourists to visit Indonesia, the airline’s president director Emirsyah Star said.

“We are going to expand our program to Taipei this year in order to cater for more tourists from the Chinese market,” he said.

Garuda has so far offered the travel package program in China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), South Korea, Japan, Australia and Europe (Amsterdam, the Netherlands).

“Our target is to increase our international passengers by 20 percent from the program’s levels this year,” he said.

According to the airline’s marketing and sales manager, Arif Wibowo, tourists from these countries usually took a 4 to 5 day tourism packages.

“We have a lot to offer through this program, from budget traveler packages to premium packages,” he said.

He also said that the Garuda Orient Holiday program was offered in cooperation with the airline’s hotel subsidiary Aerowisata, which operates several hotels in the country’s main tourist destinations such as Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Denpasar, Medan and Padang.

Meanwhile, in a bid to increase foreign tourist arrivals in the country and support the “Wonderful Indonesia” tourism campaign, the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry has officially collaborated with Garuda Indonesia in its promotion programs.

“This joint promotion shows our strong commitment to promoting Indonesia and its rich culture and creative industry to the world, to attract more tourists,” Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Mari Elka Pangestu said in Jakarta on Tuesday from the sidelines of the Tourism Promotion memorandum of understanding (MoU) signing.

The MoU will be effective for three years and there is a possibility for collaboration extensions.

She said that within three years, the ministry would supply Garuda Indonesia with tourism material that could be published in the airline’s in-flight magazines.

Garuda magazines will feature places across the country to attract tourists.

The ministry will also input to the airline’s in-flight shop so that more Indonesian products are available for the passengers, she said.

“We also encourage Garuda Indonesia to serve more Indonesian food because it is strongly related to tourism,” she said.

She also hoped that Garuda could open more new routes linking cities in Indonesia to cities in countries with emerging economies, such as those in ASEAN, China, Taipei and India. “It has been proven that new routes will bring more people to Indonesia,” she said. (nfo)