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.