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Lake Toba to be included in Google Street View
The world will soon be able to take a virtual tour of Lake Toba in North Sumatra, as the world's largest crater lake will be available on Google Map's Street View.
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Google Maps' Street View will soon offer virtual panoramic views of the lake from various points across the area. (Pesona Danau Toba/-)
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ndonesia's most famous lake, Lake Toba in North Sumatra, will soon be able to be viewed from all angles in Google Street View, with photographs for the online platform beginning to be taken on Monday.
Arie Prasetyo, Lake Toba Authority Agency head, expressed enthusiasm for the process, saying featuring the lake on Google Maps would be a positive impact in globally exposing the beauty of the world's largest crater lake.
"Hopefully Lake Toba will be more known and become famous through the Street View images," Arie Prasetyo told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Arie further said the images would help ease navigation around Lake Toba. For example, he said, tourists that want to travel to Lake Toba can first get a visual idea of the area through Google.
"This method will help tourists find tourist locations they want [to see] in Lake Toba," Arie said, while explaining that the step was initiated by Google Maps in the aim of supporting tourism to Lake Toba.
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Google Indonesia communications manager Jason Tedjasukmana said in a statement that the implementation of Google Street View on Lake Toba is a form of commitment to support the development of tourism in Indonesia.
Jason said the platform would offer visitors virtual panoramic views of the lake from various points across the area.
The images on Google Street View are slated to be launched on Sept. 27, Jason said, which would coincide with World Tourism Day.
"The hope is that after launching this Street View service from Google, it can support the government's efforts as a boost to the target of 1 million tourists to Lake Toba by 2019," Jason said.
Lake Toba is one of the government's "10 New Balis", a policy focusing on priority destinations being developed as part of an ambition to welcome 20 million foreign tourists next year. (liz/kes)
