The Indonesian city of Lampung, gateway to the famous volcano of Krakatau, will be hosting this year’s Tourism Indonesia Mart & Expo (TIME), the country’s annual travel mart, from tomorrow to Friday.
TIME is the equivalent of the Thailand Travel Mart. Now in its 17th year, the event is organised by the Indonesian Tourism Promotion Board (ITPB), a private-sector body, and supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Provincial Government of Lampung and the national associations for hotels, tour operators and conventions.
The Jakarta-based company Titan Convex is the event organiser. This is the first time that Lampung is hosting TIME as part of the ITPB’s to showcase different upcountry destinations.
The chairwoman and steering committee of TIME 2011, Meity Robot, said: “The shifting of TIME to Lampung will be for both 2011 and next year. This year’s TIME will focus on supporting the national tourism campaign, ‘Wonderful Indonesia’ and raise the country’s image as one of global travel destinations.”
She said the exposure will also help speed up the development and improvement of infrastructure, tourism facilities and tourism attractions in the region.
The province of Lampung lies west of Jakarta, across the Sunda strait, about 40 minutes flight away It is the gateway for visiting Krakatau, and home to two of Indonesia’s largest natural reserves. TIME 2011 will coincide with the holding of Festival Krakatau, an annual culture fest that ends with a tour of the active volcano itself.
The Indonesian government early this year announced an optimistic target of attracting 7.7 million foreign tourists in 2011, up about 10% from 7,000,571 arrivals in 2010. The country attracted 4.3 million foreign tourists during the January-July period, up 7.53% from 4.04 million in the same period a year earlier.
The number of foreign tourist arrivals in July 2011 was 745,500, up 10.54% over 674,400 in June, and up 13.21% over 658,500 in July 2010.
Ngurah Rai airport in Bali remained the main entry gate for foreign tourists, with a total of 279,200 in July 2011, up 10.75% over 252,100 in July 2010. Arrivals at Ngurah Rai between January to July 2011, reached 1.57 million.
The second highest number of arrivals was recorded at Soekarno-Hatta airport, to 1.11 million. This puts Indonesia in the unique position of a country whose primary beach resort gets more visitors than even the capital.
It is primarily to decongest Bali and better distribute visitor arrivals around the equally beautiful areas across Indonesia that TIME is being rotated around various destinations nationwide.
Average star-rated hotel occupancy rate in 20 Indonesian provinces in July 2011 reached 58.37%, up 4.11% from that in July 2010, and and up 2.36% over June 2011.
The Indonesian government is also working to make its traditional cloth Batik equally as popular as Thai silk.
A World Batik Summit 2011 has just ended in the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) and brought together more than 1,000 buyers, producers, sellers, media and fashion designers.
Another provincial destination, Pangkalpinag, Babel, has hosted an international marine tourism seminar to attract divers, yachts and other seafaring enthusiasts.
The city of Manado in North Sulawesi province is also getting international exposure.
It hosted the Asean economic ministers meeting this year and is due to hold the 2012 Asean Tourism Forum under the theme, “Asean Tourism for Global Community of Nations”.
