Time to escape from domestic drudgery

By I. Christianto

JAKARTA (JP): The holiday season is coming around again and it's time for travel agents to reap the benefit.

While the political and financial turmoil goes on, travel agents are helping those in the country who are likely not affected, but just stressed, by the prolonged crisis to spend their holiday overseas.

The recent three-day Holiday Expo, an exhibition on tours and travel held at the Jakarta Convention Center, proved that public enthusiasm remains high for overseas tour packages. Many participants at the exhibition said that they were satisfied with business during the event.

Venezia Tan, operations manager of Smailing Tour, said that the June-July period coinciding with school holidays was always the best time for people to spend their holidays.

"Therefore many people are looking at tour packages. We had a good response during the event, though business was not as we had hoped," she said.

She said that for international outbound tours, many Indonesians were fond of visiting Europe, the United States, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

"This year, many people are seeking tours to Europe and the U.S. They prefer to take shorter tours as the holiday period this year will not be as long as last year's. Many prefer to join 10 or 12-day tour packages."

She said that Indonesians preferred to visit the West Coast in the U.S. as there were more attractions such as Disneyland, Sea World and Universal Studios.

Western Europe, she said, was also popular for most Indonesians as there were many interesting cities such as Paris, Florence and Venice, London, Lucerne and Amsterdam.

An executive for outbound tours of Bayu Buana, Regina, said that Indonesians might prefer to go to Europe rather than the U.S. due to the procedure in getting visas.

"Many Indonesians learn that it is a bit difficult to get visas to the U.S. This may be the reason they prefer to go to other destinations, especially Europe," she said.

Europe is one of the most popular destinations for international visitors in 2000. France, saw a record number of 75 million foreign visitors in 2000.

In 2000, France was far ahead of the United States, which hosted 52.7 million foreign tourists in 2000, according to World Tourism Organization figures, and Spain, which received 48.5 million visitors from abroad.

Nana, an executive for sales and marketing of Panorama Tours and Travel, said that weather was also an important consideration for visitors.

"Europe has better weather in June-July, that's why more Indonesians are interested to go there. Interesting itineraries are also an important factor," she said.

Anthony of outbound tour of Avia Tour said that Europe was actually the preferred choice of most parents.

"In addition to the lower price, most parents prefer to go to Europe due to its classical image," he said.

Generally, travel agents set a two-week tour to Europe at around US$1,500 or $2,500.

Most Indonesians favored shorter tour packages to Europe of around two weeks, because of the lower cost and the shorter holiday period.

According to Venezia this year's holiday period would not be as long as last year.

Christy from the sales office of Vaya Tour and Regina said that different schools in Indonesia usually had different holiday periods, causing most families, to take shorter tour packages.

Escape

Besides traveling to long distance destinations, certain destinations in Asia were still favorites with certain people.

Repeat tourists usually want to go further, beyond Asia, to Europe or the U.S. while first timers choose destinations closer to Indonesia.

In Asia, there is a new attractive service -- luxury liner cruises.

Elvi M. Irawan of Star Cruises said that her company, which operates Star Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line, saw significant growth in passengers from Indonesia.

"This year we target some 30,000 passengers from Indonesia," she said, adding that some 23,000 people took the adventure last year.

Star Cruises' route includes Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, along the Malacca Strait.

In spite of the financial crisis, the total number of Indonesians traveling abroad has been stable in recent years, in contrast with the number of foreign tourist arrivals in the country.

Many Indonesians prepare their travel budget in U.S. dollars, so they do not face any difficulties when they have to pay the travel agents which calculate rates based on the greenback.

Christy said many people were stressed due to the prolonged political deadlock and wanted to escape from the troubled domestic scene.

"Travel agents are just facilitators to help them escape from such stressful situations," she said.

Travel agents, in the meantime, continue to launch various promotions to lure more people to go abroad, not only to Europe but to other equally attractive destinations.

Panorama, for example, offers a tour to Singapore which includes a show of the popular boy-band Westlife. Smailing offers "buy two get one free" for a tour package to the U.S. West Coast.

Travel agents claim that such promotions have won a great response from the public.