$9.5m worth of orders booked during TIME expo

$9.5m worth of orders booked during TIME expo

JAKARTA (JP): Participants at the annual Tourism Indonesia
Mart & Expo (TIME) 2000, which ended on Wednesday, booked orders
worth about US$9.5 million.

The event steering committee chairperson Meity Robot said the
transaction figures represented an increase of 10 percent on the
$9.5 million recorded at last year's event.

"This year's travel mart is so much better than last year's
both in terms of the number of buyers and the value of
contracts," she told a media briefing.

She said the number of international buyers increased this
year to 124 companies from 109 companies last year, but the
number of local participants who offered their products and
services declined to 155 companies from 163 firms last year.

She said the success of this year's event was mainly due to an
improvement in the country's social and political condition.

TIME last year was closed one day ahead of schedule due to the
escalation of antigovernment protests.

At least seven international buyers canceled their
participation before the event was opened in September last
year due to concern over security in the country.

Meity said most of the international buyers were repetitive
participants from Indonesia's current markets, such as the United
States, the Netherlands, Britain, Japan, Australia and Germany.

Some of the buyers, however, were new participants from
countries which are less popular among Indonesian travelers like
South Africa, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Poland and Hungary,
she said.

Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Udin Saefudin said the
government was planning to expand its tourism promotion to new
markets such as China, India, South Africa and the Middle East.

"We want to take advantage of the increasing confidence of
international travelers' in Indonesia by promoting our tourism
resources in these countries," he said, adding that the
government was targeting to attract at least 5.4 million
international visitors next year, up from 5.1 million for this
year.

TIME is a collaboration between the Indonesian Tourism
Promotion Board (BPPI), the capital administration, the
directorate general of tourism, the Indonesian Hotel &
Restaurants Association and some leading tourism-related
companies.

Meity said BPPI planned to hold TIME 2001 for Sept. 9 to Sept.
14. (cst)