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THE number of foreign tourists visiting North Sumatra until the third quarter of 2020 was only 22,842 people due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Visits of foreign tourists fell 87.99 percent compared to the same period in 2019 which amounted to 190,143 due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Head of Distribution Statistics at the North Sumatra Central Statistics Agency (BPS), Dinar Butar-Butar in Medan.
She added that the decline in foreign tourist visits was due to the COVID-19 pandemic which was taking place globally. The COVID-19 pandemic has made foreign tourists cancel their travel plans, including to North Sumatra.
Dinar said, there had been an increase in visits since July, but not much so that North Sumatra foreign tourists were still visiting at a minimum. The data shows, from 22,842 foreign tourists, most of them entered through Kualanamu Airport as many as 20,244 people.
Then from Belawan Port 2,578 people and Tanjungbalai Asahan 20 people. The most tourists coming to North Sumatra, he said, were still from Malaysia or as many as 20,212 people. After Malaysia, the highest number of tourists from Singapore was 2,509 and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 608 people.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Association of Indonesian Travel Companies (Asita) North Sumatra, Solahuddin said, it is predicted that there will not be many foreign tourists visiting until the end of 2020.
“There are almost no requests for tourist trips from abroad to North Sumatra until the end of October. Referring to these conditions, Asita North Sumatera predicts, foreign tourist visits will continue to decline until the end of 2020,” he concluded. [antaranews/photo traveltext]
