More UK tourists expected to fly in

More UK tourists expected to fly in

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia expects to see more tourists from
Britain as state-owned Garuda Indonesia will link Batam in Riau
of southern Sumatra with London next month.

Director of the Indonesia Tourist Office in London, Arifin
Pasaribu, said here yesterday that Britain was one of Indonesia's
major tourist markets in Europe.

Arifin who was in Jakarta to escort a number of overseas tour
operators said that Indonesia's 10 major tourist markets, by
rank, were Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Australia,
Britain, Germany, the United States, the Netherlands and Korea.

Based on data from the Ministry of Tourism, Post and
Telecommunications, 165,778 tourists from Britain visited
Indonesia in 1995.

Indonesia saw last year some five million foreign tourists,
about 18 percent higher than 1995's figure.

Informed sources said that Garuda, which revamped its service
to Britain in 1995, planned to start the new route next month
with the initial flight from London to Batam on April 2.

Currently the Indonesia-Britain route is served by British
Airways, via Kuala Lumpur, and Garuda which flies via Abu Dhabi
and Bangkok.

Garuda flies to Amman and Jeddah via Batam's Hang Nadim
Airport in a bid to promote the island which has been developed
as an industrial and tourist zone.

Batam, developed since the early 1970s as an industrial and
tourist center, is located some 20 kilometers southeast of
Singapore.

The Hang Nadim Airport has been developed as an international
airport for both scheduled and chartered passenger and cargo
flights and now has a 4,000-meter runway. (icn)