Foreign tourist arrivals drop 19.5 percent

Foreign tourist arrivals drop 19.5 percent

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Foreign tourist arrivals in October plunged 19.5 percent
compared with the previous month, when anti-American sentiment in
the country rose on the tail of the United State's retaliation
attacks in Afghanistan, a senior official said.

State Minister of Culture and Tourism I Gede Ardika said on
Tuesday that threats of "sweeping" activities against foreigners,
especially American citizens, had led some governments to issue
warnings to their citizens against travel to Indonesia.

This had caused many potential visitors to cancel their plans
to visit the country, he said.

"Visitor arrivals dropped 15.81 percent compared to the same
period last year," Ardika said, explaining that October last year
saw the arrival of 369,386 people compared with 310,997 in
October this year.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. had caused visitor arrivals
at the 13 main points of entry to decrease 3.7 percent to 386.182
compared with August and the same period last year. September had
seen growth of just 2.3 percent.

The 13 points of entry in Indonesia are airports in Jakarta,
Bali, North Sumatra, West Sumatra, East Java, Central Java, West
Nusa Tenggara, North Sulawesi, and South Sulawesi; sea ports in
Batam, Jakarta, and Riau; and the land-border crossing in
Entikong, West Kalimantan.

Ardika said that the decrease had led the government to adjust
its 2001 foreign visitors target to between 5.1 million and 5.2
million from initial estimates of 5.4 million.

"We predict that we would only be able to achieve about 97
percent of the target," he said in a hearing with the House of
Representatives Commission VI overseeing human resources and
religious affairs.

As a result, the government's foreign exchange target of
US$5.3 billion from tourism this year could also not be met,
Ardika said.

Last year's target of 5.1 million was also not reached with
total arrivals from all points of entry recorded at 5.064 million
people.

However, Ardika said that the government would not revise down
its 2002 target of 5.8 million visitors as yet, saying that his
office would closely monitor developments before adjusting the
targets.

Ardika also said that in order to offset the negative effects
of media coverage against the country's image, a more aggressive
tourism marketing and promotion would be targeted at medium and
short-haul markets such as to China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan,
Australia, and to member countries of the Association of South
East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"We will also focus our marketing efforts on countries in
Eastern Europe, Russia, South Africa, the Middle East, and
India," he added.

Ardika also said that during December, the government had
arranged the showing of 60 second and 30 second Indonesian
tourism promotions on CNN and BBC which would be aired 500 times
and 250 times respectively.

"We hope that with this aggressive promotion we will be able
to recover the country's image," he said, adding that the
advertisements had cost $5 million from the state budget.