Tourist arrivals drop, but recovery on the way

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

ourist arrivals in November last year dropped 14.2 percent compared with a month earlier, but the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) hinted that the country's tourism industry was on track toward recovery.

In November, a total of 305,519 tourists visited the country, a 14 percent decline as compared with 356,075 in October, BPS director Rusman Heriawan said on Friday.

In total, in the January to November period, tourist arrivals topped 3.3 million, a 12 percent drop on the same period the year before.

However, he downplayed suggestions that the decline reflected a lengthening of grim prospects for the country's tourism, which has suffered numerous shocks, including terrorist attacks in Bali in 2002 and the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta last year, the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the Iraq war.

"The decline was mainly because of the low season. Visitors do not usually come on holiday in November," Rusman said, adding that they generally waited for the peak season, from the middle to the end of December.

He maintained that tourism was on track to get back on its feet.

To prove this, he pointed out that the November figure was 27 percent higher than the one posted for the same month in 2002, with visitors to Bali in November last year rising 150 percent compared with the same month of 2002.