Lake Toba promotion efforts aim to make waves
Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Parapat, North Sumatra
In its fourth holding this year, the Lake Toba Folk Festival featured its usual attractions, such as music and dance performances by the Batak people of North Sumatra who consider the area their sacred homeland.
But brought out to center stage this time around at Southeast Asia's largest lake were water sports, particularly jets-skiing, which local tourism officials believe may be able to whip up flagging interest in the area.
Local hoteliers report visitor numbers, especially of foreign tourists, have dropped to this ancient and mysterious area, with the huge lake featuring the "jewel" of Samosir Island.
Province officials, including Governor T. Rizal Nurdin, donned wetsuits and climbed aboard jet skis for the opening ceremony on June 26.
Along with 68 jet skiers from Jakarta-based Indonesian Jetsport Boating Association (IJBA), the governor toured Lake Toba. Starting from the housing compound of the provincial administration, the 149.5-km-long route included Tuktuk, Tomok, Pangururan, Muara, Balige and Parapat, all tourist resort towns on the lake shores.
Tomok, for example, is notable for history buffs as it is home to the graves of Batak kings, such as King Sidabutar. Here tourists, aside from visiting the graves and listening to stories about the Batak kings, can also enjoy the Sigale-Gale statue traditional dance performance. Rizal and his entourage stopped at Tomok to visit the grave of Sidabutar and watch a performance of the traditional dance.
"Touring the lake on a jet ski is really an interesting experience as you can savor much of the natural beauty," Rizal said.
The governor hoped that the promotion of jet-skiing would boost tourist foreign and domestic arrivals in the area, especially after local hotel and tourism operators reported a drop in the number of tourists visiting Lake Toba in the last few years.
Data compiled by North Sumatra Tourism Board show that annual visitor numbers to Lake Toba are very small, and account for only 5 percent of foreign tourist arrivals in North Sumatra.
In 2003, only 4,068 of a total of 81,538 foreign tourists to the province made their along the bumpy roads to Lake Toba. They were generally from Malaysia, the Netherlands, Germany and Britain.
Ranti Tobing, the owner of Toledo Inn Samosir, for example, said in the past two years that there were relatively few foreign tourists visiting the lake between June and August, previously a good period for visitors.
"Usually, when it is summer in the northern hemisphere, a lot of European tourists come to Lake Toba. I don't know why in the past two years there have been only a few."
She added that most European tourists visiting the lake came from the Netherlands.
"Usually they stay here for three to five days. But only a few Dutch tourists come now."
The lack of visitors has led to hotel owners slashing their room rates. The rate for renting a room in a local home ranges from Rp 5,000 to Rp 200,000 a day, she said. Non-star-rated hotels charge between Rp 100,000 and Rp 200,000 per person per day, while star-rated hotels charge Rp 300,000 above per person per day, she added.
Meanwhile, the president of the North Sumatra Tourism Board, Henry Hutabarat, said there were several factors involved in the lack of tourist interest in the area.
Although there has been a global decline in travel due to the war on terrorism and some countries have imposed travel advisories on Indonesia, the main factor, he said, was the dilapidated state of the roads leading to it from Medan and other cities.
It takes over four hours by bus from Medan to Parapat, he added.
However, an alternative route from Medan to Brastagi in Karo regency and then to the lake cuts the time to 2.5 hours.
"The road on this alternative route is not good either but you can get very close to the Toba Lake sooner. The local administration must immediately take care of road facilities to the lake area if it expects to boost tourist arrivals there," Henry added.