The tourism ministry has set up 180 tourism events in order to achieve the 2018 target of 17 million international tourists.

“We’ve prepared 180 events for Southeast Asia, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, United States and Africa regions,” said tourism ministry's deputy minister for overseas promotion, I Gde Pitana during the Tourism National Coordination Meeting III.

Pitana explained that the 180 events are divided into several categories namely public tourism exhibition (38 events), special tourism exhibition (20 events), Wonderful Indonesia festival (29 events) and selling mission (93 events).

“This does not include the technical meeting that will have 80 events throughout 2018, public tour involving 1,055 people, special-interest tour and MICE involving around 380 people,” told Pitana.

“To achieve this target, we are implementing a lot of promotional and marketing strategies. For Marketing, we’re using the DOT (Destination, Original and Time) approach. For the promotional strategy we’re going with BAS (Branding, Advertising, Selling) and media is using POSE (Paid Media, Owned Media, Social Media and Endorser) approach. For the main markets, we will take part in international tourism exhibitions to promote Wonderful Indonesia,” he added.

The DOT approach will focus on the 10 New Balis that fulfill the 3As criteria: Attraction, accommodation, and accessibility. Those destinations include Great Jakarta, Great Bali, Great Riau Islands, Joglosemar (Yogyakarta, Solo and Semarang), Bunaken, Wakatobi, Raja Ampat, Medan, Lombok, Makassar, Bandung and Banyuwangi.

Read also: Six glamping sites in Indonesia for adventure seekers

Meanwhile, the ministry has listed five countries as the main target market: China, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and Japan.

“The focus for 2018 will be on digital tourism, homestay and air connectivity. There will be other seven activities such as branding, top 10 originations, top three main destinations, development of 10 priority destinations, human resources certification, tourism awareness movement, tourism investment improvement and crisis center development,” told Pitana.

If in the past two years the ministry had been working on building the Wonderful Indonesia brand, this year the focus is on hard selling and building partnership with airlines and wholesalers.

For the Asian Pacific market consisting of China, Australia, Japan, Korea and India among others, the ministry does plenty of hard-selling activities such as exhibition and sales mission.

“We develop the Chinese market through CITM and PWI events and by partnering up with Baidu, C-Trip and charter flights,” told Pitana.

As for the Indian market, Indonesia takes part in SATTE, OTM and PWI events, for Singapore there are NATAS and ITB Asia events while in Malaysia the ministry takes part in MATTA as a part of PWI event.

For Korea there are Hana Tour, MODE Tour and Kofta, for Japan there are JATA and PWI activities and in Taiwan there’s Taipei International Fair.

For Thailand, Wonderful Indonesia is going to take part in the Thailand International Travel Fair, the middle-eastern market is developed through ATM Dubai event and Hong Kong’s market through DRT Hong Kong.

For the European market, the ministry holds events such as ITB Berlin, IFTM Top Reza, Vakantiebeurs, WTM London and PWI, in Australia there’s PWI located in Melbourne and Sydney and in the United States there are IMEX America and DEMA Show. (asw)

Popular

Volcano erupts in North Sulawesi, hundreds evacuated

Dubai roads, airport reel from floods after record rains

Ramadan boosts consumer confidence, retail sales