Chennai: Indian tourists continued to travel to Indonesia in good numbers despite the natural disasters over the course of last 10 months faced by the South East Asian nation.
Owing to Mount Agung eruption last year in Bali, Indonesia has suffered a loss of over one million tourists but it was the Indian market which helped the country resurrect its position in the global tourism market.
"There was 30 % year-on-year increase in terms of Indian arrivals in 2017, emerging as the fifth largest source market for Indonesia," deputy minister of tourism marketing, ministry of tourism, Republic of Indonesia (MoTRI) Nia Niscaya, said. Also, she announced that Indonesia has set a target of 7,00,000 Indian arrivals for 2018 and of them 3,65,000 have already been recorded between January to August second week of 2018.
At present, talks are going on between aviation regulatory bodies of Indonesia and India to renew the air service agreement.
One Indian carrier has expressed interest in starting direct flight from New Delhi to Indonesia and by year-end positive results are expected. Currently, there are 56 weekly flights between India and Indonesia.
On the latest earthquake incidents in Lombok and loss incurred to tourism industry, Niscaya said that Lombok is not a popular destination compared to Bali so the damage to the industry is comparatively less. "In terms of numbers, we have recorded a fall of around 1,00,000 tourists in past two to three weeks in Lombok." She informed MoTRI alone has a budget of approximately USD 9 million for mitigations and provides every possible help to tourists in case of any natural calamity.
Niscaya is in India representing MoTRI at the Indonesia Sales Mission happening across Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad this month. While Mumbai and New Delhi Sales Mission took place on August 14 and 17, 2018, Bengaluru and Hyderabad will happen on August 27 and 29.
