Tourist arrivals may rise by 18% in Q1: Ardika

The Jakarta Post, Bandung

The country's tourism sector is expected to remain buoyant in the first quarter of this year, despite earlier concern at the impact of the general election and the government's new restrictive visa policy, according to a senior official.

Minister of Culture and Tourism I Gede Ardika said that foreign tourist arrivals in the first quarter of this year were expected to increase by 18 percent to around 1 million from 820,000 in the same period of last year.

"There has been a significant increase in the number of tourist arrivals lately despite fears of an unfavorable environment as painted by many analysts and several industry players," said Ardika in Bandung recently.

He explained that the surge in tourist arrivals was driven mainly by the fact that the country's security and political situation remained peaceful and stable during the ongoing general election campaign.

Tourist arrivals from January until the second week of March were dominated by Asian nations, such as from Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and China, with most visiting Bali, Batam and Jakarta, he said.

Ardika was optimistic that tourist arrivals this year would increase to more than 5 million from 4.4 million last year.

With regard to implementation of the visa-on-arrival policy, Ardika said that as of now there had been no significant impact on tourist arrivals, as previously feared by tourism businesspeople and analysts.

Ardika previously exposed the policy, saying that it would hurt badly the country's tourist industry.

The government imposed in February the visa-on-arrival policy, which requires visitors from 23 selected countries to apply for a US$25 on-arrival visa for a 30-day stay or $10 for a three-day stay.

The affected visitors are those from countries that include South Africa, Argentina, Denmark, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Canada, Poland, South Korea, New Zealand, France, the United States, the UK, Australia, Japan, German, Hungary, Norway, Switzerland, Taiwan, Brazil and Finland.