City hopes to benefit from Chinese tourists

Novan Iman Santosa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Jakarta tourist industry has yet to benefit from the vast potential of the Chinese market as most tourists from China prefer to spend their holidays in Bali, using the city solely as a transit point.

The Chinese government designated Indonesia as a tourism destination on March 1, allowing its citizens to travel here as tourists under a more relaxed immigration regime.

The Chinese tourists, however, do not stay long in Jakarta.

"They only spend one night here for a city tour before heading to Bali where they spend three days and four nights," Robert from the Manta Tour firm told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

"On their way home, they just have a brief stopover at the airport as a connecting flight is already waiting to take them home," he added.

The tour agent usually arranges trips for two or three groups from China each month. Each groups is made up of about 20 tourists.

Robert was speaking on the sidelines of a tourism promotion presentation organized by the Yunnan provincial administration and tourist agency in the Raddin Hotel, Ancol, North Jakarta.

Manta Tour is one of the Indonesia-China Travel Commission (ICTC) members approved to handle tourists from China.

ICTC chairman Tony Suwadie said that the Commission has catered to some 3,000 Chinese tourists since March 1.

"But our embassy in Beijing reported that it issued some 20,000 visas during the first half of the year," Tony told reporters.

According to Tony, there is a huge backlog in the processing of visa applications in the embassy due to a lack of staff. He said that the Chinese authorities had actually reported a higher number of applicants, some 40,000, during the same period.

This figure is still very low, however, compared to Thailand, which attracts about 1 million Chinese tourists annually, he added.

Despite an interest in visiting Indonesia, Tony said there were still a number of obstacles that prevented a greater number of Chinese tourists visiting here.

"First of all, we have limited direct flights to and from Jakarta. Only the Indonesian flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, and China Southern Airlines connect Jakarta with Guangzhou and Shanghai.

"We also face visa problems as Indonesia has only one diplomatic mission in China, that is our embassy in Beijing," he said.

Both governments have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to open Indonesian consulates general in Guangzhou and Shanghai.

Meanwhile, vice director general of the Yunnan Provincial Tourism Administration, Zhang Likun, highlighted the fact that it was more expensive and took longer to obtain an Indonesian visa than it did to obtain visas for other similar countries.

"It costs about US$30 and takes between six days and two weeks to get the visa. Thailand, for example, charges less than $10 and issues the visa in two days," he said.

Zhang also said that Thailand had a consulate in the Yunnan capital of Kunming.

Also present during the presentation were the Yunnan deputy governor, Li Xinhua, Yunnan tourism officials and representatives of Indonesian travel bureaus.