Indonesian Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Wishnutama Kusubandio has revised down the number of foreign tourists to Indonesia in 2020 from 16 million to 5 million amid the spread of COVID-19.

Illustrative image (Photo: AFP/VNA)

Speaking at an online press conference on April 16, Wishnutama said his office also cut this year’s target of revenue from international tourists more than half from last year’s realisation of 20 billion USD.

The Statistics Indonesia (BPS) reported on April 1 that the number of foreign travelers in the country declined by 30.42 percent to 885,100 due to impacts of the pandemic.

The biggest decline was seen in holidaymakers from mainland China (94.11 percent), followed by those from Hong Kong (China) (93.12 percent). However, there were slight increases in the numbers of tourists from Malaysia and Japan.

Addressing a Cabinet meeting the same day, President Joko Widodo believed that there will be boom in Indonesian tourism next year if the epidemic ends at the end of this year. He urged the officials to prepare to take advantage from the rise of the domestic tourism sector in 2021.

He also asked ministers to prepare an economic stimulus package for businesses in the tourism sector and the creative economy, so that they can survive and not make layoffs on a large scale.

Last February, the government rolled out a stimulus package worth 10.3 trillion Rp (664.51 million USD) for the tourism sector in the form of discounted airline tickets to 10 major tourist destinations, incentives for airlines and travel agents and tax exemption for restaurants and hotels in these destinations.

Source: VNA