Tourist arrivals drop, but recovery on the way

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.