According to the Jakarta office of Statistics Indonesia (BPS), the number of foreign tourists visiting Jakarta in 2019 has been on a decline since August and that continued until November. Data from December is not yet available.

In 2019, the city welcomed the highest number of foreign visitors in July with a total of 268,258 and that number declined to 184,521 in November.

Although a downward trend from midyear onward can also be seen in previous years, as visitors usually peaked in July or August, month-to-month comparisons from 2016 to 2019 show that foreign visits from August to November hit an all-time low last year.

The acting head of the Jakarta Tourism and Creative Economy Agency, Cucu Ahmad Kurnia, said that this was because the political instability surrounding the 2019 presidential race and the numerous subsequent protests that swept the city in the second half of the year created an image that the country and Jakarta were unsafe to visit. The United States even issued several security alerts in response, Cucu noted.

He was hoping that the much-debated Formula E that was to be held in June 2020 would help to restore Jakarta’s image as a safe city.

“We are hoping that holding an international-scale event like this will restore people’s perception that Jakarta is safe; that is the most important [thing],” Cucu told The Jakarta Post on Thursday, adding that the administration would do its best to bring people to actively participate in the event, understanding that there had been a backlash from the public following massive floods that hit Greater Jakarta last week.

The head of Gadjah Mada University’s master’s and doctoral programs in tourism studies, Muhammad Baiquni, on the other hand, pointed out several other factors that might have led to the decline of visitors last year.

Baiquni explained that the world economy was slowing down and that was coupled with the greying population of Americans and Europeans, affecting the choices of these foreign tourists — many would opt to travel to nearby countries rather than ones much farther away.

That is also why it would be more strategic to try to attract visitors from other Asian countries.

“Asia, demographically, is experiencing a boom of young people and they [are interested] in exploring other Asian countries, their neighbors,” Baiquni told the Post on Thursday.

In attracting young travelers, Baiquni suggested that the city administration should utilize digital promotion better and facilitate more intercultural programs like student and worker exchanges by which people would organically share their experiences through their social media accounts.

Cucu said he already had the change in mind as he planned to shift to “a more intense social media usage” for promoting the city, but added that he would first focus on collaborating with stakeholders during his early months in office, as private entities play a big role in tourism.

A tourism expert and the author of Creative-Based Tourism, Henky Hermantoro, told the Post on Thursday that the city, being the country’s capital, had big opportunities as accessibility had been taken care of — airports and sea ports were already in place. 

The next step was to develop travel packages according to the markets and manage existing tourism sites well. 

“When talking about tourism, there are four [aspects]: attraction, amenities, accessibility and ancillaries. Jakarta has good prospects in all of them. What we need to focus on right now, in my opinion, is product development,” said Henky, explaining that development meant creating a “special-interest” tourism package like heritage tourism. 

Based on a 2019 report by the World Travel and Tourism Council and Jones Lang LaSelle, Jakarta was dubbed one of the “Emerging Performers” — a label given to cities that have emerging tourism infrastructure, growing momentum and the start of increasing pressures related to tourism growth — alongside Bangkok, Cape Town and Mexico City, among others. 

The report suggested that the Emerging Performers should “invest in infrastructure development to support sustainable tourism growth”. (ydp)

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