Garuda to fully tap Japanese market

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

Speaking to about 100 Japanese journalists, Bali provincial tourism service chief Gede Nurjaya spoke about Japanese tourist arrivals in Bali during the past five years.

During this period, the number fluctuated but since 2000 Japanese tourists visiting Bali have always topped the list of foreigners coming to the island, followed by those from Australia and Taiwan.

About 680,000 Japanese tourists were estimated to have visited Indonesia last year, although the exact figure for Bali was not tabulated.

The Japanese were spearheading an increased interested in the island, which is gradually recovering from the terror attacks of 2001.

"Previously, the highest number of foreign tourist arrivals was recorded in 2000, at 1,412,839, but 2004 saw an increase, to 1,458,309," Nurjaya said.

Indonesia's consul general in Osaka, Japan, Pitono Purnomo, said the Japanese tourist potential had yet to be tapped.

"In fact, in 2004 alone, according to the Japanese Statistics Bureau, some 17 million Japanese traveled as tourists abroad. This number is likely to rise to some 20 million in 2007," Pitono said.

Statistics show that about 30 percent of some 17 million Japanese will go to Europe with a further 23 percent going to America. China will be the destination for about 17 percent, while another 13 percent will go to Korea and another 8 percent to Thailand. Only about 4 percent are expected to visit Indonesia, however.

"I'm really surprised at these figures. Indonesia lags far behind as the number of Japanese tourists visiting our country is much less than those going to other countries," Nurjaya said.

Nurjaya said he would follow up the data Pitono had presented to find a way to lure more Japanese to Indonesia.

Balinese tourism observer Gede Pitana said there were several strategies to encourage Japanese tourism in Indonesia. Japanese tourists were different from other cultural groups and had to be handled carefully, he said.

Tour operators and bureaucrats making decisions in the tourism sector must bear in mind that the Japanese were conservative travelers who followed trends, generally preferring safe, well- developed areas on the beaten track.

"Japan is an advanced country that has enjoyed rapid technological and economic progress, but in their daily lives, the Japanese are highly conservative and traditional," Pitana said.

This conservatism was reflected in the countries Japanese tourists visited, he said. Prior to 2000, about 40 percent of Japanese tourists vacationed in Hawaii and Guam because these two locations were popular destinations. Both nations were also linked to Japan, had Japanese populations and had a shared history -- the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was also an historical attraction, he said.

The Japanese also placed great faith in their government, he said, and were easily scared off if it issued travel warnings about diseases such as SARS or the Asian bird flu, or terrorist attacks.

In response, the Indonesian government, particularly the Balinese provincial administration, needed to provide detailed information about any potentially negative developments to the Japanese government, particularly about how they affected tourism.

Indonesia has failed to tap the Japanese tourist potential to the full, partly because of its rather weak position in the market. Indonesia has no special representative offices for tourism affairs in Japan. Such offices, would facilitate government-to-government discussions on tourism matters.

In 2003, Pitana suggested to the government send permanent tourism attaches to Japan, Australia and Germany. Then-minister of culture and tourism Gede Ardhika agreed to the idea in principle but it had never been followed up, he said.

Stationing an attache and experts on Indonesian and Balinese tourism to Japan would not be a waste of public money, Pitana said, if one considered the foreign exchange earnings that the state would enjoy from an increase in the number of Japanese tourists in Bali.

"If Indonesia takes all these strategic measures, I believe in the next three years, there will be an increase in the number of Japanese tourist arrivals in Bali," he said.

"The tourism business is very much concerned with image, so any step you take will not have an immediate impact.

"In the least, we may enjoy the same increases as other tourist destination countries. If Malaysia sees approximately a 10 percent increase annually, we may enjoy a similar percentage," Pitana said.

Pitana, a professor of tourism at Udayana University, Bali, said successfully increasing the number of foreign tourist arrivals in Indonesia would depend on the frequency of flights to foreign countries.

The reopening of the route between Fukuoka and Denpasar, closed as from November 2002, and an increase in the frequency of flights between Osaka and Denpasar from three times to five times a week, Pitana said, would be helpful in increasing the number of Japanese tourist arrivals in Bali.

Garuda vice president Simon Pulungan said that one of the reason behind the resumption of the direct flights between Denpasar and Fukuoka was to challenge the domination of Singapore Airlines (SQ), Cathay Pacific (CX) and Japan Airlines (JAL).

Cathay Pacific, Simon said, also flew from Japan to Indonesia but used Hong Kong as its hub before proceeding to Jakarta. JAL was Garuda's main rival, as it flew directly to Indonesia from Tokyo and Osaka.

To counter JAL's strategy, as the only competitor offering direct flights from Japan to Indonesia, Garuda was offering more tour packages, he said.

"These packages are compatible with the flight schedules of Garuda. The market is still out there and naturally it will be divided up. In future, what counts is competition in the tourist destinations that each airline offers," said Marco Umbas, Garuda general manager for Nagoya and Osaka.

Now that the direct flights to Fukuoka have been resumed and that the frequency of flights to Osaka has been increased, Garuda flights to Japan have risen to 18 times a week. Garuda flies to Tokyo and Osaka seven times and five times a week, respectively.

Garuda will rely on their latest wide-bodied aircraft such as the Airbus 330 with a capacity for 293 passengers and Boeing 747- 400, with 405 seats. This fleet has been prepared to replace the aging DC-10 fleet.