ER
MINISTRY of Tourism and Creative Economy seeks to convince the tourism industry players in South Africa regarding the adoption of Cleanliness, Health, and Sustainability Environmental (CHSE) based health protocols in Indonesia’s tourism destinations.
According to Regional III Marketing Director (Europe, Middle East, America, and Africa) Kemenparekraf, Raden Sigit Witjaksono said that since 2015, the growth in the number of South African tourists visiting Indonesia experienced very significant growth. From 22,482 tourists in 2016 to 47,657 tourists in 2019.
“This proves that South Africa and other African countries have begun to count Indonesia as one of the favorite tourist destinations,” Sigit said in his press statement.
Sigit also said Tourism Ministry continued to try to convince international audiences to visit Indonesia by implementing CHSE-based health protocols (Cleanliness, Health, and Sustainability Environmental).
“We have implemented the CHSE protocol. Such as providing CHSE training for tour operators, simulating the application of the CHSE protocol, CHSE protocol campaigns to the community and tourism actors, and also implementing CHSE protocols in destinations in areas that have passed the Large-Scale Social Restriction period,” he said.
Meanwhile the Chief Executive Officer of South African Tourism, Nthsona Sisa said the application of the CHSE protocol was also studied and implemented in various tourist destinations in South Africa.
“Tourism is one sector that not only contributes income in our country, but also absorbs a lot of labor. We learned from Indonesia and now South Africa is also currently trying to implement health protocols in tourist destinations,” Sisa said.
Sisa also suggested that there must be a global health protocol. So, there is no difference in health protocol standards in various countries in the world, including in South Africa and Indonesia.
“So do not let when we travel to a country, it turns out that the country has health protocol standards that are different from the country of origin,” she said.
Likewise, the General Manager of Thompsons Holiday, Angela Wood, said the closure of the tourism sector during the Covid-19 pandemic should not be a reason for tourism actors to stop promoting tourism potential in the country.
Angela explained, just like Indonesia, South Africa is currently empowering the potential of domestic tourists. We want to show that at this time we cannot stop, we must continue to move and continue to market tourism potential.
Indonesian Ambassador to South Africa concurrently Botswana, Eswatini and Lesotho (Pretoria), Salman Al Farisi believes both Indonesia and South Africa can help each other and work together in the tourism sector.
“The inter-country tourism sector is mutually supportive of one another, I’m sure in the future Indonesia can accommodate more tourists from South Africa and vice versa,” Salman concluded. [traveltext.id/photo special]
