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Roundup: Indonesia takes concrete steps to boost foreign tourist visits

Xinhua, June 15, 2015 Adjust font size:

Indonesia is taking concrete moves in a bid to boost up tourism sector by enticing more foreign tourists to visit the country with 12 million ones were targeted this year.

The target was higher than they were in the previous years that stood at 9.5 and 8 million ones in 2014 and 2013 respectively.

The current government led by President Joko Widodo has set tourism sector as one of primary development pillars. He believes that tourism has positive multiplier effects towards the nation's economy.

The importance to address tourism sectors has actually been initiated by the previous government by providing several facilities to accommodate the incoming of foreign tourists.

Among those facilities were the constriction of cruise ship ports in Bali and West Nusa Tenggara provinces and simpler mechanism to apply visa on online basis. Besides that, the previous government also favored the construction of hotels and resorts in tourist destinations sites.

Adding those initiatives, the current government granted free visa for more countries with an aim to entice more foreign tourists to come to Indonesia.

Through a presidential decree No. 69/2015 issued recently, President Joko Widodo freed people from a total of 45 countries to visit Indonesia from applying visas from their origin countries.

"People, who are freed from the obligation to have the visas, were those in official travel, education, social culture, tour, business, family or stopover before continuing to other countries, " an article of the decree said.

They, however, had to enter the nation through gates designated by the government to organize their coming. Those gates were airports in Jakarta, Bali, Medan, Surabaya, Batam and seaports in Bintan, Medan, Batam and Riau.

Among the countries granted for the new free visa regime were China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, the United States, Canada, Spain, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and South Africa.

In the decree, those granted the free visa were only allowed to stay in Indonesian territory no more than 30 days.

Indonesian Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said that government is now aiming to attract more tourist from Middle East countries as they have enormous potentialities to come to Indonesia. He said that tourists from Middle East have been growing significantly to 170,000 people last year, or 26 percent higher than they were in 2013.

"They used to come with their families with long period of stay. They spent 1,400 to 1,700 U.S. Dollars per visit. While the other tourists averagely spent 1,142 U.S. Dollars," the minister said recently.

He said that to grab more tourists from the Middle East countries, his ministry joined Arabian Travel Market expo geld in Dubai last month. During the occasion, the minister said that he also met several property businessmen from the region, exploring possibilities of their participation in Indonesia's resorts and other tourism projects. Endi