JAKARTA, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian government will cut airline fees and provide incentives to hotels and tourism businesses to reinvigorate tourism in the country.
The measures would mainly be applied to the resort island of Bali province, Riau Islands province and Manado city in North Sulawesi province as well as the other centers of the country's tourism, Indonesian Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said on Thursday.
The government will cut lending charges and airport fees for carriers while urging hotels to give the best prices to travelers.
"These are undertaken to reinvigorate the tourism sector and encourage people to make holidays," the minister said.
Although the foreign tourist arrivals ticked up 1.88 percent to 16.11 million people last year, it was still short of the government's expectation of 18 million people amid frequent catastrophes, according to the country's Central Agency of Statistics.
This year, the government set a target of attracting 17.3 million foreign tourists with a higher expected revenue of 21 billion U.S. dollars, according to the Tourism Ministry.
