Indonesia tourism industry’s brand, Wondeful Indonesia, had received a prestigious award namely Best Destination Marketing Award 2016 from influential travelling media outlet Travel Weekly Asia. The award was conveyed in “Honorarium for the Best in Travel Industry” event held by the media in Singapore.
Wonderful Indonesia brand got the award for a tremendous positive response given by Travel Weekly Asia readers, the statement said. “This is a gladdening achievement. Wonderful Indonesia gets more and more appreciations. They praised on how we organise the marketing of tour destinations,” Deputy Assistant for Marketing Development in Southeast Asia region at the ministry Risky Handayani Mustafa who received the award said in the event as quoted by the statement.
Intensive promotion on Wonderful Indonesia brand that represents Indonesia’s tour industry has been conducted by the ministry since last year.
World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked Wonderful Indonesia brand to 47 from 144 countries in its Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index this year. The leap to that level was extraordinary as the brand was initially categorised in NA (Not Available) position, the statement said. With ambitious target to welcome 20 million visitors by 2019, or 100 percent from 10 million ones the nation has received in 2015, Indonesia takes serious orchestrated works to address the target.
Government has reformed regulations aimed at luring more visitors to come to the archipelago nation, including the revocation of cabotage for cruises that eventually enables tourists from cruise ships to visit tour destinations across the country through several authorised seaports. Besides, the government also has shortened the Clearance Approval for Indonesian Territory (CAIT) procedure for foreign yachts planning to sail in Indonesian waters for vacation from the previous 3 weeks to 3 hours only. To expand tour destination, Indonesia is now in the process in developing 10 new tour destinations, highly expected to par with leisure island of Bali that has been favoured by foreign tourists.
All of those efforts were coupled with the ministry’s moves to develop tour attractions in tour destinations as well as accommodations for the tourists. Besides taking part in designing flight access to the destinations, the ministry also takes initiatives to consolidate state-run hotels to provide Indonesian style hospitality accommodations for the tourists. The ministry also launched the 100 000 homestay program for the tourists, constituting people living around tour destinations, expected to give direct positive impacts for their economy.
To grab more tour package sales in several destinations across the country, the ministry held frequent Travel Mart Expo. The recently-held event in Magelang, Central Java from Oct. 14 to 16 has attracted buyers from Malaysia, Singapore, India, Japan, South Korea and Myanmar that accounted for 80 percent of total the total sales.
Indonesia expects tourism can be the nation’s major earner sector amid the downturn in its large earner sectors of oil and gas, coal and palm oil.