$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)