Package tours, food festival planned for APEC participants
Package tours, food festival planned for APEC participants
JAKARTA (JP): Jakarta will offer special package tours and
hold a food festival for the participants of the forthcoming Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference to be held in
Jakarta and in Bogor, West Java, in November.
Head of the City Tourism Office, Fauzi Bowo, told The Jakarta
Post over the weekend that the social cultural section of the
APEC organizing committee, chaired by Director General of
Tourism, Andi Mapisameng, will cooperate with Jakarta's tour
operators to organize the package tours.
"We will select several tour operators to organize these
tours," Fauzi said.
APEC members include six members of the Association of South
East Asian Nations -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore and Thailand -- along with the United
States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea,
China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea and Mexico.
The package tours will include one-day tours, overnight tours
and also longer tours.
"So, they (participants) can visit tourist sites in Jakarta
and Bogor, or even farther to Pelabuhan Ratu beach in West Java,"
Fauzi said. "We will also provide charter choppers and planes if
they want to go to Krakatau, or Bali.
Sports
The package tours, Fauzi said, will include sports activities
such as fishing, scuba-diving and golfing.
Fauzi added that restaurants of four and five-star rated
hotels in Jakarta, where participants will stay, and other big
restaurants in the city also plan to hold a Jakarta international
food festival during the meeting.
The food festival will be jointly organized by the Indonesian
Tourism Promotion Board, the Jakarta Chapter of Tourism Ministry
and American Express.
"We will also encourage the four and five-star rated hotels to
organize Indonesian cultural programs such as dances and music to
entertain the participants," Fauzi said.
To ensure the security and stability in the city during the
summit, the Jakarta military command has pledged recently that it
would increase the frequency of the ongoing Operation Cleansing
anti-crime operation.
Meanwhile a report said that early on Saturday Indonesian
commandos held training exercises at Jakarta's Hilton
International Hotel following the government's appointment of it
as the official hotel for the conference.
The commandos, dropped onto the hotel's roof by helicopter for
the exercise which lasted 15 minutes, scaled down the building's
walls, crashed through windows and opened fire.(als)