After seven months of the global COVID-19 pandemic, tourism in Yogyakarta has been slowly picking up.

Yogyakarta Tourism Agency head Singgih Raharjo said on Tuesday that the province had started to see a recovery in visitor numbers, with some 5,000 daily visits recorded on weekdays and 40,000 on weekends.

Singgih shared last month that most visitors came from within Yogyakarta, from Central Java, from West Java and from Jakarta, with popular tourist areas such as Malioboro flooded with domestic tourists.

Meanwhile, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) recorded an increase in Yogyakarta’s hotel occupancy rate to 27.8 percent in July from 15.5 percent in June. That figure is still far below the pre-pandemic level of 56.3 percent in February.

Amid the improvement, nevertheless, travel agencies in Yogyakarta have yet to recover from the impact of the pandemic.

Heri Setiawan, head of the Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies (ASITA) Yogyakarta said during a virtual talk show hosted by Tribun Jogja that the agencies usually catered to foreign travelers in the pre-coronavirus days and business had yet to return to normal as most countries had still closed their borders.

Meanwhile, visitors to Yogyakarta these days usually come in small groups and without help from travel agents.

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