BANGKOK – Indonesia ‘s Ministry of Culture and Tourism is seeking a little help from its friends to promote Visit Indonesia Year 2008.
After a slow and shaky start to VIY 2008 – the ministry had to change the campaign slogan after it mangled the English grammar of its original effort – Indonesia has sought the support of Garuda Indonesia airline offices around the world.
The Garuda offices will become de facto tourism promotion offices to help Indonesia reach its target of seven million tourists in 2008.
Bali is predicted to account for two million of those international visitors.
“Bali is back to normal,” said Tatang Rukhiyat, the tourism ministry’s director of international promotion, speaking at Asean Tourism Forum.
“We don’t want to talk about Bali recovery any more because already it has recovered,” he said.
Figures for 2007 published by www.balidiscovery.com show 1,664,854 foreign visitors to Bali, a 32 percent surge over arrival numbers for 2006 (1,260,317) and the best year ever in terms of total visitors to Bali.
Arrivals from Japan (351,604) were the best result since 2000 (362,270); Australian arrivals of 204,421 were significantly better than 2006 (117,969) but below the 2004 peak of 267,520; South Korea was the big mover, recording 134,454 arrivals compared to 79,072 in 2006 and 13,739 in 2000.
According to the Indonesian Culture and Tourism Ministry, the total number of Indian tourists visiting Indonesia in 2007 increased by 52 percent to about 84,000 as compared to 2006.
