Foreign tourist arrivals rose by 12 percent in March: BPS
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The number of foreign tourists arriving through Indonesia's 13 main entry points rose by nearly 12 percent in March from a month earlier, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) said on Monday.
In its latest statistics of the country's tourism sector, the agency reported that 345,964 travellers had visited Indonesia in March, up from the 309,006 visitors recorded the previous month.
But the tourism sector has yet to rejoice, as both figures combined with January's 348,646 visitors, would only make the country's foreign tourist arrivals for the first quarter at 1,003,616 visitors, down 2.96 percent from 1,034,236 in the same period last year.
The tourism office expects to be able to attract six million foreign visitors this year. Last year, about 5.3 million foreign tourists traveled to the archipelago, generating some US$5.3 billion in foreign exchange.
Indonesia's tourist sector has struggled since the Bali bombings in 2002, and the bombings at the J.W. Marriott Hotel and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in 2003 and 2004 respectively.
Effects of the recent Asian tsunami disaster could prove to be another blow to the country's tourism sector, although tourist associations said that Bali could attract tourists who are diverting their visits from tourist destinations in neighboring countries affected by the disaster.
Elsewhere, BPS also reported that the resort island of Bali continued to be the country's main tourist magnet, recording 121,457 visitors in March, from 105,402 in February.
The capital of Jakarta and investment island Batam also managed to sustain and increase their number of visitors, each recording 96,898 and 83,811 tourists, respectively.
Although visitors to North Sulawesi's Manado still recorded at a little over a thousand, the province could prove to be a rising tourist destination in the future, as it saw a 37.3 percent surge in foreign tourists, from 793 people in February to 1,089 last month.
Indeed, one of the province's main tourism attractions is the popular offshore snorkeling on Bunaken islands.
Meanwhile, the average length of stay of foreign tourists in star-rated hotels in 10 tourist destinations throughout the country declined to 3.26 days in February, as compared to 3.44 days in the same period the previous month.
The hotels' occupation rate, however, declined to an average of 46.48 percent, from 48.22 percent in January.