Indonesia’s Foreign Tourist Arrival Up by 12 percent

By Barrie | April 28th, 2007 | No Comments

The number of foreign tourist arrivals in Indonesia during the first quarter in 2007 reached 989,492 or up by 12.65 percent compared to that in the same period last year, an official said.

Of the overall first-quarter figure, 363,686 were tourist arrivals in Bali which recorded the highest figure of foreign tourist arrivals for the past 10 years, Thamrin B Bahri, marketing affairs director general at the Culture and Tourism Ministry, said in Jakarta.

“Considering the increases in the number of tourist arrivals in the first quarter, we are confident the target of six million tourist arrivals in 2007 will be achieved,” Antara news agency quoted Thamrin as saying.

Thamrin said his ministry had recently opened five tourism promotion offices abroad in the form of “branded offices”, meaning that promotion activities are handled by professional, private foreign marketing agents.

“It is expected that Indonesia this year will have 12 overseas tourist promotion offices,” the official said, adding that previously the ministry had established seven overseas tourist promotion offices, namely in Japan, China, Australia, Germany and India, all in the form of “branded offices”.

The ministry was also exploring the possibility of opening tourist promotion branded offices in Malaysia and Singapore.

Source:Xinhua