Indonesia to achieve Tourism Targets in 2008

Jakarta, Indonesia | January 02, 2008 by D-8 Secretariat

With a wide range of promotional programs both at home and abroad, the Indonesian government is optimistic that the Visit Indonesia Year 2008 campaign will draw at least 7 million foreign tourists, reported the Jakarta Post Daily. “I’m optimistic that we can reach the target and book US$6.4 billion in foreign exchange earnings, as we’ve done many campaign activities both domestically and internationally,” Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik said at a year-end media conference on Thursday.

Indonesia will host over 100 international events ranging from cultural and musical to sports activities throughout the archipelago as part of Visit Indonesia Year 2008. The government has allocated up to US$15 million to finance the campaign.

Indonesia’s first Visit Indonesia campaign in 1991 was not as successful as expected, adding just 400,000 tourists to the arrival total. Jero said improving security conditions in the country were another factor that could help attract more foreign tourists.

“Thanks to this, we’ve seen an increase of foreign tourist arrivals this year, reaching 5.5 million tourists from 4.8 million in 2006, and generating about $5.3 billion in foreign exchange income,” Jero said, adding that this year tourist arrivals are the highest in the last 10 years.

D-8 countries posses a great deal of potency in tourism sector. Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Egypt and Turkey are the member countries that record high percentage of tourist arrival growth each year. In the framework of cooperation, D-8 also underlines the importance of boosting a more intense work on D-8 tourism sector. In fact, D-8 organization has already prepared Roadmap for 2008-2018 where the cooperation in aviation, tourism, trade and industries are among sectors significantly highlighted.

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