Thailand funding squeeze blamed for tourism woes
A report in The Jakarta Post, Medan says that a lack of funding to promote tourism in Indonesia internationally is largely responsible for a steady decline in the number of foreign tourists visiting the country, an official from the Culture and Tourism Ministry said Saturday.
After more than 5.3 million foreign tourists visited the country in 2004, the ministry recorded a drop to approximately 5 million visitors in 2005 and 4.7 million visitors in 2006.
Deputy of Resources at the Culture and Tourism Ministry Putu Laksaguna said the government allocates insufficient funding to develop Indonesia’s tourism potential, resulting in many regions not being promoted internationally.
“This year, the Culture and Tourism Ministry was allocated a budget of Rp 900 billion, of which Rp 100 billion will be used to develop tourism.
“It is impossible for us to promote the country’s tourism potential with that much money,” Putu told journalists after the opening of the 2007 Sumatra International Travel Fair in Medan, North Sumatra.
More than 80 delegations and 160 buyers from 16 countries have taken part in the fair, which ends Sunday. Aside from hosting exhibitions and tourism business forums, the event also provided visitors with the opportunity to make business contacts.
Putu said the country’s budget for the promotion of tourism is much smaller than that of neighboring countries.
He said Malaysia’s tourism budget is much larger, spending Rp 40 billion alone to advertise the country’s attractions on the CNN television network.
“Our entire budget to promote tourism in Indonesia abroad is only Rp 30 billion,” Putu said, adding that he is hopeful in the next few years the government will set aside more funding for the promotion of tourism.
The Ministry, he said, currently promotes five provinces in Indonesia every year internationally, with this year, the five provinces being promoted being East Nusa Tenggara, North Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, West Nusa Tenggara and West Sumatra.
Putu said the selection process to determine the five provinces to be promoted abroad was complicated, but was largely influenced by each provincial administration’s enthusiasm and support for promoting tourism.
North Sumatra Governor Rudolf Pardede said he hopes his province will be selected as one of the provinces to be promoted next year.
He said his administration has set aside Rp 9 billion in its annual budget to develop the tourism sector, adding that this figure was much smaller than that of the Medan city administration, which allocates Rp 30 billion per year.
“However, hopefully we can increase our budget for tourism next year in order to boost the North Sumatra tourism sector,” Rudolf said.
Report by The Mole and The Jakarta Post
John Alwyn-Jones
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