ER
BRINGING foreign tourists to Indonesia (Inbound) is one way of the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy to improve the competitiveness index or the Indonesian Tourism and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) which is currently in the top 40 in the world.
According to the Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Wishnutama Kusubandio during a limited meeting related to the Improvement of Indonesian Tourism at the State Palace, Central Jakarta, explained that there were several strategies to increase competitiveness targeted by President Joko Widodo to increase to Ranking 36-38 in 2021.
“As an illustration, the ranking of neighboring TTCI countries in ASEAN such as Singapore is in the 17th position of the world, Malaysia ranked 29th in the world, Vietnam 63th in the world and Thailand 31st in the world. There are some strategic things that we will do soon. That is how the grand strategy of Indonesian tourism related to other Ministries/Institutions is to use inbound strategies to bring in foreign exchange,” he said.
Wisnutama also explained that he had coordinated with Garuda Indonesia’s national flag carrier, to increase Inbound promotion rather than outbound promotion. It has also explored with 33 airlines operating in Indonesia to increase the number of flights and seat capacity to Indonesia.
“So that the mind set of the airlines and so on will be directed how to bring outsiders to enter Indonesia, not Indonesian people who want to go. Various efforts have also been carried out by Kemenparekaf, one of them is to attract foreign tourists from the long haul market, an important thing that concerns Kemenparekraf is the availability of sufficient seat capacity,” he added.
For this, it is hoped that Garuda Indonesia airlines as a national flag carrier will play more roles, including in conducting cooperation (codeshare) with world airlines to be able to meet the seat capacity.
Wishnutama also explained, to improve the competitiveness index, the president formed an acceleration team that included various Ministries / Agencies such as the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Public Works, the Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises, Investment Coordinating Board, Ministry of Manpower, Ministry of Village, Development of Disadvantaged Regions and others.
In the meeting, the President explained in the index that Indonesia has 5 advantages over other countries, namely those related to price competitiveness, policy priorities, natural attractiveness, openness, as well as cultural attractiveness and business visits.
“We are still weak in the other five pillars, namely, in the areas of sustainable environment, health and hygiene, tourism infrastructure, these are in a continuous improvement, then in security, then also in the lack of information technology readiness. I think these records must be our make us work forward with measurable and clear targets,” Wishnutama concluded. [traveltext.id]
