by Abu Hanifah
JAKARTA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia will take a series of measures to further boost the tourism sector, which has been picked as the nation's core business, so as to achieve the 15 million foreign visitors target this year.
The measures included enhancing the digital marketing system, expanding the homestay program, as well as improving flight connectivity from market countries to tour destinations across the country.
Indonesia's Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said his ministry, related ministries and agencies have initiated coordinated efforts in facilitating the related programs.
The minister said that digital marketing was considered the most essential one as it underlies the remaining programs in attracting foreign visitors.
"The visitors' lifestyle has changed. They seek information on destinations, comparing tour packages and book the packages digitally through their smartphones," the minister said while addressing the 46th anniversary of Indonesian travel and tour agencies association (ASITA) on Monday.
The ministry has collaborated with state-run telecommunication firm Telkom to provide ITX (Indonesia Tour Exchange), a digital platform for businessmen in the tourism sector to directly interact with potential consumers.
"The ITX is expected to fully operate by the second quarter this year," the minister said, advising ASITA members to extensively use ITX in attracting more consumers in their businesses.
The homestay program was originally intended to involve the public in tourism sector so as to directly benefit from tourism, the minister said, adding that the arch project of homestay program, the tour village, was scheduled to be developed this year.
The tour village project was originally designed to support the operation of Indonesia's now-developing 10 new tour destinations, which are highly expected to be comparable to the resort island of Bali.
"We expect to see the opening of 20,000 homestay this year, followed by 30,000 ones in 2018 and 50,000 ones in 2019. In the first quarter this year 1,000 new homestay must be opened and ready to accommodate foreign visitors," the minister said.
In expanding flight connectivity, the minister said that the government encourages domestic airlines to team up with their foreign counterparts in opening new routes, providing direct flights, extra flights and chartered flights to Indonesia.
He added that increasing the flight connectivity is also important to boost the number of foreign visitors as 75 percent of their visit to Indonesia uses air transport.
It needs to see 4 million flight seats more to comply with the 15 million foreign visitors target this year, compared with the 19.5 million seats to cope with 12 million foreign visitors targeted last year, he added.
"And in the coming years the flight seats should increase by 3.5 million and 3 million from the developing figures to cope with 18 million and 20 million targets set for 2018 and 2019 respectively," the minister said.
Indonesia attaches great importance in developing the nation's leading sector by pledging to allocate up to five times-fold from the existing figure in the state budget to finance tourism this year and in the coming years.
The sector is expected to earn more than 24 billion U.S. dollars by 2019 for the nation's economy, giving the nation a dash of hope amid possible global economic downturns.
