With the increased tension due to trade war between USA and China, a decline has been observed for Chinese tourists in Indonesia. Government is now taking necessary steps to lure and attract tourists from European country to visit.
“We don’t have to [rely on] Chinese tourists all the time. We will shift our target to European countries such as the United Kingdom, which we haven't really tapped into,” Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Wishnutama Kusubandio told tempo.co on Wednesday.
As per Wishnutama, Indonesia's tourism has its own characteristics that boast on natural wonders, making it ideal for the European market. Europeans are famous for preferring outdoor activities such as sailing in Labuan Bajo in East Nusa Tenggara and Tanjung Puting in Central Kalimantan.
He also mentioned that while this seems attractive it will also require more effort and cost to market archipelago as a tourist destination for Europeans.
"But it's a market with potential. We can see now that Labuan Bajo has been welcoming mostly Western tourists," said Wishnutama, adding that the ministry was also wanted to attract more tourists from the United States and Australia who have similar interests.
Indonesia welcomed around 1,565,200 European tourists between January - September 2019 as per the statistics from Statistics Indonesia (BPS). The number though is slightly less compared to the visitors in 2018, which was 1,566,900 .
However in the same timeline 482,500 American tourists were welcomed by Indonesia. Their number was an increase of 12.93 percent as compared to last year.
Wishutama also confirmed that while the focus has shifted to attract European and Western Tourists, they will continue to make efforts to encourage tourists from China to visit. So regardless of the new strategy Government will continue to boost growth of Chinese tourists to visit archipelago with Likupang and Manado in North Sulawesi being prepared as the main destinations to attract them.
As per the data by BPS, only 2.2 percent increase was observed in tourism from China between January and May 2019. The decline was replaced by Malaysia as the number of tourists contribution to 23.04 percent growth during the same period.
Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Industry Association chairman Haryadi Sukamdani in early December, made a prediction of Chinese tourist number to drop by 15-20 percent.
“[The decline], which predicted to reach almost 1.5 million visitors, is purely due to economy [factor],” Haryadi said. (dpk/kes)