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THE CHAIRMAN General of the Indonesian Travel Agents Association (Astindo), Pauline Suharno, is pushing for the establishment of the Indonesian Tourism Board. According to her, the Indonesian Tourism Board or Indonesian Tourism Agency has a different function from the current Ministry of Tourism in Indonesia.
“The Ministry of Tourism is more in charge of regulations, as a regulator. The marketing function should be in the industry,” Pauline said when met by the media after breaking the fast with the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), Thursday (03/13) 2025.
The tourism industry, which includes businesses and travel agents, Pauline said, is more aware of market needs from time to time. She cited the example of one of the tourism agencies in Asia, the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB). As part of its tourism promotion, the HKTB invites industry and media in local countries to get input from the target tourism market.
“They don’t know what’s appropriate for our market, what’s social media like? If they look at the statistics, maybe the biggest statistic is TikTok, number two is Instagram, but the markets are different,” Pauline explained.
Pauline hopes that the promotion of Indonesian tourism can continue to be carried out by the Ministry of Tourism, while making collaborative efforts with stakeholders related to tourism. It is not enough to promote the products of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), as is being done by a number of regionally-owned companies (BUMD) and state-owned companies (BUMN).
According to Pauline, if Indonesia’s MSME products have high sales power, it will be difficult to introduce creative economy products if there are no tourists coming to Indonesia.
“So, it’s not only the MSMEs that are invited to promote or be promoted. In fact, the tourism industry can also be promoted,” she suggested.
She explained that for example, the management of tourist destinations uses investment funds from the private sector as well as destinations that are still managed by several ministries, including the Ministry of Forestry. The facilities at Indonesian tourist attractions, especially those managed by the government, are still not good.
“The toilets are not good, the facilities are not there, the roads or the access is not good. So, yes, the way is the efforts of BUMN and BUMD to help attractions to improve facilities and so on,” Pauline concluded. [kompas.com/photo special]
