Tourist industry authority

Tourist industry authority

Although many a time I flew JAL on my trips to Japan, I
nonetheless could not help but feel my heart fill with a blend of
pride and pity every time I saw a Garuda aircraft lonely resting
in the parking area of Narita Airport. The plane always looked
innocent.

I could not fly Garuda because the frequent flight delays, as
rumored, were dreadful. It is commonplace for passengers to raise
complaints for bad service in letters to the editor in popular
local papers.

Recently I flew return in a Garuda Airbus to Ujungpandang. I
prepared myself mentally in the event that I would encounter any
unpleasantries in the flight service. Unexpectedly, nothing of
the sort happened. Everything went as smooth as a whistle.

Dissatisfaction was met only in the cafeteria of Ujungpandang
airport, where for lunch I had Coto Makassar (local soup
specialty) among the noted popular delicacies. I was upset to
find that all the sweetbread lumps in the soup were terribly
hard. I gave up eating them.

My greatest disappointment, however, was at Kendari airport.
During Japanese occupation in 1942-1945, Kendari was one of the
strategic outposts of the Japanese navy.

When I entered the hall of the airport building, I looked for
a bathroom. A foreign businessman whom I accompanied had the same
intention. My heart sank and I felt ashamed when I looked up and
saw the roof wide open and under repair. The floors had turned
into a splashy mess by a past downpour. To my dismay, the
condition of the toilet was just indescribable. On top of that,
the electric light happened to be off. The foreign guest and I
queued up and unloaded ourselves in complete darkness. And the
smell was disgusting.

Then followed the drive from the airport to the project site.
The widespread potholes in the roads had been turned into muddy
puddles by the rain.

Fortunately, a happy surprise emerged at Hotel Aden, Kendari,
when I saw some foreign tourists seemingly enjoying their meals
in the dining room.

In witnessing such scenes in the remote countryside of
Southeast Sulawesi, a passage from the Garuda magazine obtained
in the aircraft is worth quoting, which reads: Indonesia's
natural resources promise the potential of national wealth for
the wellbeing of its people and prospective investors in various
fields of endeavor, including the tourist industry.

This kind of expression must remain only a cliche-ridden piece
of rhetoric, if the realities reveal conditions as depicted
above.

The main theme that I wish to stress upon in this writing is
the government agency in charge of managing and supervising
component institutions of the tourist industry.

If the flush toilets in the hotel and the water supply in the
sink in the lavatory of Merpati MZ 717 (which I flew from Kendari
to Ujungpandang on Aug. 13) were out of order, I would strongly
feel that the government agency in charge of tourism management
was not operating.

S. SUHAEDI

Jakarta