Tourist board to extend promotion in major marts

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)