Airport blast hits tourism industry

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Sunday's bomb blast at Soekarno-Hatta Airport will further damage the tourist industry in the city, which has already been suffering due to the fears of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the impact of the Iraq war, an official says.

Jakarta Tourism Agency chief Aurora Tambunan has expressed her concern over the bomb blast, saying that the incident has rendered her recent foreign trip to introduce Jakarta as a tourist destination useless.

"On my tour, I told them that Jakarta was safe and was a good place for them to visit. With the bomb blast at the international airport, what can I say now?," Aurora told the press when asked to comment on the bomb blast.

Soekarno-Hatta International Airport is one of the 13 gateways used by tourists when coming to the country. The blast, which injured 11 people, took place just three days after a low explosive bomb exploded behind the UN building in Central Jakarta.

This year, Indonesia has set a target of attracting 3.8 million foreign tourists with Jakarta being earmarked for some 20 percent of this number. The figure reached 3.81 million last year, which was lower than the previous year's number of 3.88 million.

The hotel occupancy rate in the city earlier this month was only around 28 percent on average.

In March, Aurora and her entourage visited the International Tourismus Borse in Berlin, Germany, to promote the tourist industry in Jakarta. Earlier this year, she also visited several countries in the Middle East on the same mission.

The city administration is trying to promote tourism shopping in Jakarta, and also packaged tours like Jakarta-Puncak-Bandung and Jakarta-Java-Bali-Lombok trips.