Battling violent image to tempt tourists

Battling violent image to tempt tourists

Nopporn Wong-Anan, Reuters, Bandung, West Java

An air-conditioned train gathers speed as it takes a hill curve on a track elevated hundreds of feet above lush terraced green rice fields.

A short distance away, travelers watch smiling village children gather around a kite maker assembling their favorite toy. Other bare-footed youngsters fly red diamond-shaped kites that have already been made.

Some 2,300 kilometers to the east in the Moluccas islands, a civil emergency is in place as the Indonesian government tries to end a three year religious conflict that has claimed more than 5,000 lives.

The conflicting scenes of serenity and violence are a conundrum for Indonesia's tourism sector as it tries to put the best marketing spin on the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Indonesia's international image is marked by endless demonstrations, political instability, Muslim militancy and communal, religious and separatist violence -- complete with travel warnings from major Western governments.

Against this, it is hard for Indonesia's travel industry to sell its message that it is safe to visit the jungles and pristine beaches of the world's largest archipelago -- which if laid over Europe would stretch from Dublin to Moscow.

"I don't have any problem on embassies' travel warnings as long as they mention clearly where the troubles are," I Gede Ardika, Minister for Culture and Tourism, told Reuters.

The 1998 Asian economic crisis hit Indonesia harder than its neighbors. As well as suffering financially, the crisis helped bring about the fall of Indonesia's autocratic long-time president Soeharto.

The country has been racked by a series of deadly communal and separatist clashes in some outlying provinces, and went through political turbulence that saw three different presidents in the four post-Soeharto years.

Faced with this, tourists steered away from the beaches of Bali and other Indonesian holiday spots, such as the island of Lombok, Manado on Sulawesi and the cultural destination of Yogyakarta on Java island, in favor of other Southeast Asian destinations.

Indonesian tourist arrivals fell 11 percent to 4.6 million in 1998. Visitors who did arrive spent less money and shortened their stays, cutting tourism spending 19 percent to US$4.3 billion.

Visitor numbers climbed back to a record high in 2001 of over 5.1 million, taking revenue back to $5.4 billion -- a similar level to spending before the crisis.

But the heavily-indebted country lags behind neighbors like Thailand, just a quarter the size, which last year had 10 million tourists generating income of $7.6 billion.

The resort island of Bali -- the "Island of the gods" with 20,000 temples, is the jewel in the crown of Indonesian tourism.

It suffered from the country's plunge into crisis but attracted nearly 1.5 million foreign tourists last year.

Bali has been largely free of the unrest that has rocked Indonesia in recent years, partly since its Hindu religion insulated it from Muslim-Christian fissures elsewhere.

But it is seen by many internationally as an oasis of calm in a turbulent country.

"While Bali remains a relatively safe destination, much of the rest of Indonesia is a risky proposition," says tour guide publisher Lonely Planet in a web site warning to tourists.

The United States has a similar caution.

"The security in many parts of Indonesia puts Americans at potential risk," says the web site of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.

The British Embassy says: "We believe that Indonesia is one of a number of countries where there is an increased threat to British interests from global terrorism. Visitors should be extra vigilant in public places."

Although some of the worst social troubles have abated in Indonesia and the presidency of Megawati Soekarnoputri looks relatively stable, the country is still fighting separatist rebels in Aceh and Papua, at the extreme western and eastern ends of the country.

And after the U.S. declared war on terrorism in Afghanistan, anti-U.S. rallies erupted in Jakarta and elsewhere and extremist Islamic groups threatened to expel Americans and other Westerners. A grenade exploded at an Australian international school in Jakarta in November.

The demonstrations have faded and the threats proved mostly empty, but the damage to Indonesia's image lingered.

Indonesian tourism authorities and private tour operators acknowledge there is violence in some danger spots but argue that with 17,000 islands in a country with a land area nearly three times the size of Texas, there are plenty of safe holiday choices.

"We are quite open. Temporarily...you are not suggested to go to the Moluccas, you are not advised to go to Aceh, but you are suggested to go to other places," said Ardika.

If tourists believe the message, with an associated marketing effort built around a rich culture of indigenous tribes, rain forests and marine national parks, Ardika hopes to push arrivals this year to 5.4 million to 5.8 million.

The global marketing plan takes in traditional markets such as Western Europe and North America, along with emerging ones including China, India, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

"Our strategy is it is better for us for not too many tourists to come, but they can spend more (time and money)."