JAKARTA, March 1 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian tourism ministry held tour package sales events in the Netherlands, France and Germany, aimed at grabbing more visitors from those West European countries, a senior official said on Wednesday.
The 2017 Western Europe Sales Mission was held from Wednesday to Friday in Amsterdam, Paris and Munich, for Indonesian tourism businesses to meet their counterparts in those three countries, Deputy Tourism Minister for Foreign Marketing I Gde Pitana said.
"Besides selling the tour packages, the events were part of efforts to build up Wonderful Indonesia tourism brand by improving the cooperation with airlines and tour package agents in those countries," Pitana said.
He added that the rank of Wonderful Indonesia brand has steeply ascended to 47 from 140, leaving behind brands of tourism giants in the region, Thailand and Malaysia, at 83 and 96 respectively.
The events are also part of Indonesia's plans to take part in world's leading travel trade show of 2017 ITB Berlin slated for March 8-12.
According to the data released by the ministry, visitors from the Netherlands, France and Germany contributed 579,389 visitor arrivals to Indonesia in 2015. That figure was 2.69 percent higher than a year earlier.
Indonesia has set target to welcome 15 million foreign visitors this year.
The Southeast Asia's largest economy, which has reset tourism as its core business, aims to welcome 20 million foreign visitors and earnings of more than 24 billion U.S. dollars by 2019.
