Tourist board to extend promotion in major marts

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesia Tourism Promotion Board (ITPB) will continue promoting in major overseas markets including Singapore, Japan, Australia, Taiwan and Germany, to attract more foreign visitors.

"With a budget of about US$20 million, we will also promote Indonesia's tourism in the United States and Britain this fiscal year," ITPB's managing director, Wuryastuti Sunario, said earlier this week.

She said the promotion will include advertisements in both printing media and television.

Wuryastuti said that in the last promotion period, between August 1993 and March 1995, ITPB focused just on Singapore, Japan, Australia, Taiwan and Germany, the five major markets for Indonesia's tourism industry.

"The result of the promotion was very great. Last year, more than four million foreign tourists visited Indonesia, indicating a 17.7 percent increase from 3.4 million in 1993. Out of the 1994 visitors, 56.83 percent came from the five major markets," she said, adding that $15 million was allocated in the last promotion period.

She said that the selection of the major markets -- now numbering seven to include the United States and Britain -- was based on various factors including reports from the Pacific Asia Travel Association and ITPB's consultants.

Data from the Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications show that last year Indonesia earned $4.7 billion in revenues from 4,006,312 foreign tourists, 1.01 million of whom came from Singapore, 476,456 from Japan, 305,209 from Australia, 317,505 from Taiwan and 160,325 from Germany.

Challenge

According to Wuryastuti, promoting Indonesia overseas is very challenging.

"Indonesia's tourism industry has to fight by itself, including establishing promotion for the country. Promotions about Indonesia, including its tourist industry, is actually the job of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But we realize that the situation and conditions are not in favor, so ITPB must be willing to support the promotion," she said.

She also said that there are other challenges in launching promotions in the major markets.

"We have to know the right segments. In Japan, for instance, we hunt for female employees, elderly people, executives and golfers. But we must realize that certain Japanese won't try something which their neighbors have not tried first," she said.

Indonesia targets to attract 6.5 million visitors per annum with total spendings of $8.9 billion by the end of the current Sixth Five Year Development Plan (Repelita VI) period in 1999. This year, some 4.65 million foreign tourist are expected to visit the archipelago.

The government has also targeted to attract more than 10 million foreign visitors per annum by the end of the Repelita VII period in 2004.

Wuryastuti, who has been dealing with tourism since 1965, said that to promote the tourist industry, ITPB will hold the Tourism Indonesia Mart and Expo (TIME) on Oct. 5-9 at the Jakarta Convention Center.

"The event will be the expansion of the Tourism Indonesia Mart held last year at the same place. TIME will be an annual agenda which will hopefully promote and develop the country's tourist industry," she said. (icn)