Foreign tourist arrivals up despite terror bomb

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Foreign tourist arrivals in the first nine months of this year increased by around 28 percent over the same period last year, despite the terrorist bombing incident in front of the Australian Embassy here in September, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported on Monday.

In its latest report on the country's economic indicators, the agency said that 3.41 million foreign tourists entered the country through 13 entry points from January to September this year -- 28.06 percent more than the 2.66 million foreign tourists who entered in the same period last year.

In September alone, the number of foreign tourists visiting Indonesia reached 403,400, 16.53 percent higher than the number of arrivals in September of last year, although the figure was down 10.31 percent from the 449,804 who arrived in the previous month.

"The drop is because September is usually the start of the low season, after the peak season in August," the agency said.

The government is targeting 5 million foreign tourist arrivals this year.

The number of arrivals through Soekarno-Hatta International Airport rose by 12.69 percent from 683,631 to 770,370 year-on- year. Meanwhile, arrivals at Ngurah Rai Airport in Denpasar, Bali, were also up by 49.84 percent to 1,143,214.

The agency also reported that the average length of stay in star-rated hotels in 10 tourist cities increased from 2.00 days in August to 2.12 days in September. The hotels' average occupancy rate of 48.18 in August, however, was down slightly from 49.21 percent in July.

In its October report, the agency predicted that the deadly bomb attack on the Australian Embassy on Sept. 9, which killed 11 people, would severely affect the number of tourist arrivals in that month.

Monday's report, however, would appear to be good news for the country's key tourism sector, which has been in the doldrums over the last two years following the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak and the Marriott bombing in 2003, as well as the Bali bombings in 2002.

Both bombings had severely affected the sector, especially after a number of nations imposed travel advisories against Indonesia.