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By APD writer Aditya Nugraha
**JAKARTA, July 6 (APD) ** – Despite the foreign tourist arrival figure in the first 5 months that accounts for 35 percent from the overall 18 million ones targeted for this year, Indonesia is still upbeat to meet the target at yearend as various strategies have been set to boost the arrivals, an Indonesian minister said here on Friday.
Indonesia Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said efforts to comply with this year’s target would be favored by global economy situation that has started to recover, intensive promotion in major and niche markets so as to maximize foreign tourist arrivals in the second half this year.
“Tourism ministry and stakeholders in national tourism industry have actually prepared 9 strategies to boost arrivals of foreign tourists, but so far we would focus on 4 of them,” the minister said in his office here.
The four strategies focused at present were cross-border tourism, hot deals packages, tourism hubs and low cost carrier terminals, he added.
Cited the foreign tourist arrivals figure in the first quarter that has exceeded 4 million ones and the first half target set at 8 million ones, the minister was optimistic that the yearend target can be entirely complied.
Indonesia’s Central Statistics Bureau (BPS) initially announced that the nation received 6.37 million foreign tourists from January to May this year, 2.7 percent higher than 6.2 million ones recorded in the corresponding period last year.
“It means that the foreign tourist arrivals in June must reach 1.63 million ones to meet the 8 million foreign tourist target in the first half,” he said, commenting on the BPS announcement.
Indonesia has revised its foreign tourist arrival target this year from initial 20 million ones to 18 million ones due to string of major natural disasters in several provinces and tragic air crash that occurred last year whose impacts to tourism sector remained felt in the following year.
Indonesia registered 15.81 million foreign tourist visit last year that fell short from the 17 million ones targeted in the year due to those issues.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
