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)