Indonesia just posted an unwanted record – the lowest number of inbound arrivals in history.
Foreign tourist arrivals plummeted 87.4% in April, the lowest level since it began officially recording tourism data.
That represented just 160,000 inbound visitors, said Statistics Agency chief Suhariyanto.
"This shows that the impact of Covid-19 on tourism is tremendous and that we need to be careful about its impacts on supporting sectors, either on room occupancy rates, the transportation sector, the creative economy industry, trade and other things," he said during an online press briefing.
"We need to think of new solutions so that this sector [tourism] can recover in the future."
Although most airports remained open, overall traffic declined by 99.7%, due to the various travel restrictions across the island nation.
There have been very few international flights since restrictions were placed on inbound travellers in mid-March.
The number of arrivals would have been even worse but for tiny Timor Leste.
The country is situated in the middle of the Indonesia archipelago and shares a land border.
More than 80,000 arrivals came via this route.
"There was a drop in visits from tourists of almost all nationalities but, for those from Timor Leste, the downturn was minimal as they can still travel overland," Suhariyanto said.
An additional 60,000 came from Malaysia which is the only other country to share a land border with Indonesia outside of Papua.
