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THE MINISTRY of Tourism said that Indonesia’s culinary richness can be used as a strategy to attract more foreign tourists to visit the country.
“So, it’s true that (culinary) is one of the concerns or concerns of the Ministry of Tourism in our program, both in the short term and long term,” said the Deputy for Tourism and Infrastructure Development of the Ministry of Tourism, Hariyanto, after attending the Monthly Brief 2025 in Jakarta, Friday (02/7), 2025.
In response to the importance of culinary tourism to increase foreign tourist spending during their stay in Indonesia, Hariyanto said that local cuisine offers many choices for foreign tourists to taste.
Examples of food that can be chosen are fried rice, gado-gado to soto. Culinary tourism can be even more interesting for foreign tourists to taste because many of them are related to the local wisdom of a region.
Indonesia’s culinary tourism, he noted, is unlimited and interesting, so the potential to increase foreign tourist spending should be much greater than competitors from other countries such as Thailand.
“There are many things that we really need to pay attention to. Culinary tourism is part of the tourism product,” Hariyanto affirmed.
To promote Indonesia’s culinary tourism, Hariyanto added that culinary products are currently the focus of the Ministry of Tourism to ensure that tourism products can move up a class. Aside from culinary tourism, other areas of focus include wellness tourism, gastronomy, marine and fashion.
“Fashion has the potential to increase the interest and visits of both foreign and domestic tourists. Earlier on Monday (3/2), the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded that the average expenditure of foreign tourists during their visit to Indonesia was around US$1,391 or IDR22.86 million throughout 2024,” he underlined.
He explained that the expenditure is mainly for accommodation and food and beverages. On average, foreign tourists spent around US$1,391.85 during their stay in Indonesia throughout 2024,” he said.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, foreign tourists spent an average of US$1,287 or IDR21.16 million during their stay in Indonesia. In the same period, foreign tourists also spent an average of about 10.39 nights in Indonesia.
Foreign tourists spent most on accommodation and food and beverage. In Q4-2024, the share of the two types of expenditure, namely accommodation and food and beverage, reached 57.49% of the total foreign tourist expenditure. [antaranews]
