Yogyakarta tries to branch out in tourism

Yogyakarta tries to branch out in tourism

by Asip A. Hasani

YOGYAKARTA (JP): There is no question that Yogyakarta has
almost everything to develop its tourism industry. And there are
those who contend that the city has more to offer than even the
famed tourist destination of Bali.

The big difference is that Bali is a separate island, far
removed from the trouble and strife which have beset Java in
recent years. And it has an airport capable of receiving direct
international flights from abroad.

Instead of cleaning up with profits, Yogyakarta's hotels are
waging a rate war as a result of a drastic decline in the number
of tourists.

Only 24.8 percent of the city's 9,500 hotel rooms were
occupied in 1998, and 30.4 percent in 1999; the hotel "break-even
point" is normally at the level of at least 40 percent of room
occupancy.

The multidimensional crisis, which led to riots in many
places, particularly in Java, in the wake of the reform movement
in 1998, is undeniably the main reason even though Yogyakarta was
relatively calm. The number of foreign tourists visiting
Yogyakarta dropped from 351,542 tourists in 1996 to 277,847 in
1997, 78,833 in 1998, and 73,361 tourists in 1999.

The number of domestic tourists who visited Yogyakarta also
declined, from more than 901,575 in 1996 to 440,989 tourists in
1999.

"The condition would not be as bad as this if our tourism
foundation was already strong and under the conditions of a
supportive bureaucracy," the chief of Yogyakarta's branch of the
Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association, Stef. B. Indarto,
told The Jakarta Post recently.

"Riots don't happen in peaceful Yogyakarta, therefore we can't
blame the unrest for the decline in tourist visits here."

Tourism has been a significant source of local government
income for years. In 1996, it contributed about Rp 32.8 billion,
or more than a half of Yogyakarta's annual revenue of about Rp 50
billion. The amount plummeted to Rp 13.1 billion in 1998.

Yogyakarta enjoyed its tourism heyday in the 1980s when hotel
occupancy rates reached an average of 70 percent a year. This
soon led to the rapid growth of hotels and other tourism
investment.

There were 400 hotels in 1999, including four five-star hotels
with a total capacity of 9,500 rooms, and 99 travel bureaus and
agencies.

Investors see a promising future in the tourism industry, with
the many marketable tourist attractions.

Besides the magnificent Buddhist temple of Borobudur and the
Hindu temple of Prambanan, Yogyakarta enjoys its own special
heritage, including its role as the center of Javanese culture
with the kraton (palace) as the symbol. There are also plenty of
places for adventure tourism in the area.

There are a total of 86 tourism attractions, which consist of
46 heritage sites, 30 nature sites, four agrotourism areas and
six adventure tourism places.

International airport

The director of the government-backed Yogyakarta Tourism
Development Board (BPIPY), Wiendu Nuryanti, said the social and
political instability was not the only factor in the decline in
the number of tourist arrivals.

She told the Post that secondary factors included low
accessibility to the city and the stagnant tourist products.

Before the crisis hit the country in late 1997, the number of
tourists visiting Yogyakarta was stagnant from 1993 to 1996.

"The stagnancy wouldn't have occurred if Yogyakarta was more
easily accessed by tourists. The only solution to this problem is
an international airport," she said.

She said the government should certify Yogyakarta's Adi
Sutjipto Airport as an international airport, while the local
administration, private sector and the local community must work
together to produce better tourism attractions.

Adi Sutjipto officially belongs to the Yogyakarta Air Force
Military Academy (AAU); state-owned PT Angkasa Pura operates
commercial flights in the airport under an agreement with the Air
Force.

However, only smaller commercial aircraft, such as the DC 9,
can use the airport's runway.

Bureaucracy has been a problem in upgrading the airport.

"For dozens of years we have introduced the proposal and
submitted it to all related-parties, but up until now the status
has yet to be achieved. It's almost a fantasy to have our own
international airport," she said.

"Don't they, the central government, see the promise for our
tourism industry if we have our own international airport?"

However, the Air Force has reportedly been unreceptive to the
idea, with a source saying it threatened to close the airport if
the tourism community insisted on the demand.

"No matter how intensive our tourism promotion abroad is,
tourist visits will not record a significant increase above the
351,542 tourists a year which we reached in 1996," Wiendu said.

"When I promoted Yogyakarta before Singaporean travel bureaus
and agencies sometime ago, they simply asked if the Silk Air
aircraft could directly land at Adi Sutjipto or not. And if it
was possible, they said they would bring tourists twice a week to
Yogyakarta."

Bad management

From the early 1990s to 1996, the average length of stay for
tourists in Yogyakarta never exceeded 2.1 day, attesting to
stagnancy in the city.

Wiendu estimated that about 15 percent of the total number of
tourists visiting Yogyakarta did not spend a night in the city
after arriving in the morning.

"Most of them stay in Bali. They arrive in Yogyakarta in the
morning and leave for their country or return to Bali in the
evening only after visiting Borobudur," she said.

Tourists' average daily spending is only between $100 to $110,
she added.

Both Wiendu and Indarto recommended progressive exploration of
tourism products.

"Unfortunately, we don't manage our assets despite their
undoubted value," Wiendu said.

She criticized state-owned company PT Borobudur, Prambanan and
Ratu Boko Tourism Park, the management of most of cultural
heritage sites in Yogyakarta and Central Java provinces, for bad
and ineffective managerial conduct of tourism sites, particularly
Borobudur temple, which has been overrun by vendors.

"The noisy vendors are very disturbing to visitors," she said,
adding that there were currently more than 2,000 peddlers
compared to 500 peddlers before the crisis.

Bad management of Borobudur temple is a serious and
frustrating problem to Yogyakarta tourism as the city has
depended for years on the temple's reputation to attract
tourists.

"For the sake of tourists' comfort in admiring the temple, the
company should free the Borobudur area from street vendors and
build a market for the vendors through which Borobudur visitors
will exit," she said.

Indarto said tourism, especially in Yogyakarta, needed more
professionals employed by the government as decision-makers. "In
contrast, the post of head of the local tourism office has never
been occupied by those professionals."

Yogyakarta does have a supportive champion of local tourism,
Governor Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, the hereditary leader of the
area.

Indarto said that Hamengkubuwono's support could lead to the
upgrading of the local airport. "And we hope that under the
Sultan's supervision, the local administration will become more
responsive to whatever is required to develop the tourist
industry."

The local tourism office is targetting annual income of
between Rp 42.13 billion and Rp 69 billion from tourism in the
years to 2004.

"We will only be able to reach those goals on the condition
that political stability and security are restored," acknowledged
the head of the provincial tourism office, Sugeng.