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COVID-19, which is shackling the world, reduces the number of Indonesian foreign tourists. In fact, as we know, the visit of foreign tourists is one source of foreign exchange reserves for Indonesia.
According to the Head of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas, Suharso Monoarfa revealed, one of the focuses of Indonesia’s development after COVID-19 is the acceleration of the recovery of tourism, also industry, and investment. However, the recovery of tourism is one of its own challenges.
“The government claims that it is still hard to restore tourism to pre-COVID-19 conditions. For this year, the graph of the impact of the corona virus on the growth of U-shaped foreign tourists is more likely to be L-shaped. Therefore, the government is adjusting tourism targets. in the range of 2020 to 2024,” Suharso said.
He explained, this year, the government targeted foreign tourists to visit 2.8 million to 4.0 million visits. This number dropped dramatically from the realization of foreign tourist visits last year which reached 16.1 million visits.
“With the number of visits, tourism revenue is targeted to only be in the range of US$2.8 billion-US$4 billion. This target certainly also dropped from foreign exchange tourism throughout 2019 which reached US$19.7 billion,” he noted.
He stressed, to realize the target, the government has prepared its horses, which is a tourism recovery strategy. The things that will be done by the government are reactivation of the domestic and foreign tourist markets, reorienting quality tourism and not just mass tourism.
“In addition, the government will also accelerate 5 super priority destinations (SPD) namely Toba, Borobudur, Lombok, Labuan Bajo, and Likupang and the next 5 SPDs, namely BTS, Wakatobi, Bangka Belitung, Raja Ampat, and Morotai, also strengthen Bali and Batam/Bintan,” he affirmed.
He explained, as one of the favorite destinations of foreign tourists, the government will also develop Benoa to support Bali as a tourism hub. Furthermore, Indonesia will also add direct flights from a number of countries, implementing hygiene and safety standards, and train workers in the tourism sector to improve their capabilities (re-skilling and up-skilling).
While in 2021, the government targets to get 4 million to 7 million foreign tourists visiting tourists. This range increased from the target in 2020, as optimism that COVID-19 has subsided. Only in 2024, the government hopes that foreign tourists can skyrocket to 16 million-17 million visits.
“For foreign exchange tourism, the Government hopes to get US$4.8 billion-US$8.5 billion. Along with the target of increasing foreign tourists visiting, in 2024 the government is optimistic that it can get tourism foreign exchange of US$21.5 billion-US$22.9 billion,” Suharso concluded. [kontan.co.id/photo special]
