Foreign arrivals rise, despite Marriott bombing

Foreign arrivals rise, despite Marriott bombing

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Showing its resilience, the country posted an increase in foreign
tourist arrivals in August -- the same month when a powerful bomb
blast damaged a luxury Jakarta hotel and killed 12 people.

The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) said on Wednesday that
despite the terror attack, foreign tourist arrivals rose slightly
to 368,217 in August from 364,952 in July.

"The bomb blast at the JW Marriott Hotel on Aug. 5 dealt only
a temporary shock," Sudarti Soerbakti, BPS chairperson, told a
media briefing.

While arrivals at Jakarta's international airport fell to
84,600 in August from 98,100 posted in July, "it had little
impact on the number of arrivals in all parts of Indonesia," she
said.

The number of foreign tourist arrivals in the January to
August period, however, decreased by around 20 percent to 2.32
million compared to 2.89 million during the same period last
year.

The BPS report covers tourist arrivals at 13 entry points
including the country's main tourism destinations such as
Jakarta, Bali and Batam.

Arrivals in both Bali and Batam also experienced a rise in
August. Bali saw a 3 percent increase in August to 121,236, while
arrivals in Batam rose from 113,099 to 123,474.

Sudarti said that the rise was evidence that the country's
tourism sector remained on track in its recovery from a recent
slump arising from a series of shocks, both internal and
external.

The industry has had to deal with a number of huge blows,
including last year's terrorist bombings in Bali, rising fears of
militant backlash against Westerners, and the recent outbreak of
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

These factors have forced the tourism ministry to cut its
foreign tourist arrival target this year by 33 percent to 3.2
million from 4.8 million. The foreign exchange revenue target
from the sector was also revised down from US$4.3 million to $2.8
million.

Confirming BPS' upbeat outlook, the Pacific Asia Travel
Association (PATA) said that Indonesia's tourism industry had now
stabilized and could even expect a late-year surge in the number
of foreign arrivals.

The chairman of PATA's Indonesian branch, Alistair Speirs, was
quoted by AFP as saying that provided there were no more attacks,
Indonesia could well see a surge in foreign arrivals in months to
come.

"We think there is strong potential for the year-end because
our infrastructure is still there, the industry is very much
still there, it just depends on bringing those foreign visitors
back," Speirs said in Singapore.

Meiti Robot, chairwoman of the Association of the Indonesian
Tours and Travel Agencies (Asita), said on the same occasion that
her office had started a tourism campaign targeting Australia,
New Zealand, Japan, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and China.