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THE PERFORMANCE of foreign tourist visits to Indonesia shows a positive increase where cumulatively throughout January to August 2024 it has reached 9.09 million or an increase of 20.38% compared to the same period last year.
According to the Ministry’s Senior Expert Staff, Nia Niscaya in “The Weekly Brief with Sandi Uno” at Sapta Pesona Building, Central Jakarta recently explained that when compared to the foreign tourist target that the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy must achieve in 2024, Tourism Ministr divides it into two scenarios, namely the lower target and the upper target. The lower target is 10.41 million visits, and the upper target is 14.3 million visits.
“And with the achievements from January to August, we have achieved 87.35% for the lower target. While our upper target has reached 63.59%,” said Nia Niscaya.
Currently, the contribution of foreign tourists for the period of January to August 2024 comes from Malaysia, Australia, China, Singapore and Timor Leste in order. The main entry points have almost passed the lower target and are approaching the upper target, especially I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport, Bali, which is almost approaching 2.95 million tourists.
“The biggest homework is the gate in Batam-Bintan or Kepri (Riau Islands). This is still quite far from the target per gate or is still around 700 thousand tourists entering,” Nia Niscaya affirmed.
Nia Niscaya then highlighted the comparison between domestic tourists and foreign tourists to see the comparison of the number of Indonesian tourists going abroad and foreign tourists coming to Indonesia. Cumulatively in the period from January to August 2024, the number of national tourists was 5.99 million.
“If you say there is still a surplus of 3.10 million visits, but we hope that foreign tourists will increase and domestic tourists will decrease. And indeed, year on year there is an increase, but month on month for domestic tourists it has decreased, maybe this is related to the end of school vacation,” she noted.
In terms of destinations for domestic tourists, Malaysia still dominates, followed by Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand and Timor-Leste. The main gates used by domestic tourists are Soekarno Hatta International Airport, Hang Nadim International Airport, Kualanamu International Airport and Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport.
On this occasion, Nia Niscaya also shared the target of foreign tourists in terms of flight seat availability. Looking at the data from Amadeus Travel Intelligence, the projection of the comparison of the use of flight seat capacity in the period from January to December 2024, 67% or 15.8 million will be used for foreign tourists and 33% or 7.7 million will be used for domestic tourists.
“If we look at the Amadeus data, January to August, the composition is more or less the same. More dominated by people entering or foreign tourists who reach 9.09 million, which is actually a good sign in terms of accessibility. And thanks to the Ministry of Transport, which has provided many solutions to improve accessibility,” said Nia.
Nia Niscaya also explained the conversion between search and booking based on Amadeus Travel Intelligence. It was found that the number of searches for Indonesian destinations will reach 858 million in 2024. However, the number of bookings or booking returns was only 1.54 million.
“When it comes to conversion, our booking returns are quite low. In percentage terms, it is only 0.2%. This data shows that there is still room to grow, so there is indeed a lot of work to be done in terms of keeping top of mind high, but conversion is also high. This is indeed our collective homework,” Nia added.
Meanwhile, in terms of domestic tourists in the period from January to August 2024, cumulatively reached 674.60 million or an increase of 19.20% compared to the same period last year, which was 565.93 million.
“The number of domestic tourists from January to August 2024 has only reached 53.97% of the 1.25 billion trips of the lower target, or 44.97% of the 1.5 billion trips of the upper target. So, we admit that this is still homework,” Nia concluded. [traveltext.id]
