19 October 2009

Same again as Indonesia launches VIY 2010

JAKARTA - Indonesia's Department of Culture and Tourism has announced its intention to continue the current Visit Indonesian Year (VIY) campaign for a third year as part of plans to attract seven million foreign visitors in 2010.

Visit Indonesia Year which was launched after 2008 was already well underway, was retained for an additional year in 2009.

The latest announcement from the government is that the programme will be retained for a third year - 2010.

Credited with bringing 6.4 million visitors to Indonesia in 2008, tourism officials remain confident that VIY 2010 will pave the way for modest growth in tourism arrivals while arrivals to competing destinations in the region continue to shrink.

Tourism officials also point to Indonesia's improving security situation as contributing to tourism growth now that violence-prone fundamentalist elements are being arrested, run to ground or physically eliminated.

Sapta Nirwandar, the director general of marketing at the Department of Culture and Tourism, told the Bali Post that suggestions are under consideration to drop the "year tag line" and just retain "Visit Indonesia."

Bali Update (www.balidiscovery.com) says critics of the retention of VIY for a third year believe the programme's message may be losing its potency and its continued retention underline a fundamental lack of creativity in how the country's tourism is promoted.

In 2008, Indonesia welcomed 6.4 million foreign tourist who spent an estimated US$7.5 billion in foreign exchange.