Jakarta - The Jakarta Tourism Agency has promised to support annual art and music festivals to lure more domestic and international tourists to the city as part of the Visit Indonesia Year 2008 program.
"We have been supporting the promotion of several annual events held in Jakarta, like the Indonesian Open and the Java Jazz Festival," said the agency`s head, Yusuf Effendi Pohan, during a regional conference of the Jakarta chapter of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies (ASITA DKI Jakarta) on Monday.
Yusuf said the administration usually supported the annual events by streamlining permit and promotion procedures as well as providing security personnel.
The agency wants to increase foreign tourist numbers by 12 percent this year from last year`s 1.2 million foreign visitor arrivals and would like to see a 15 percent increase in domestic tourists on last year`s 13 million domestic visitors.
The city administration has been promoting the Enjoy Jakarta program, which promotes the city as destination for meetings, conferences and exhibitions for the past three years.
Newly elected ASITA chairwoman for Jakarta Herna Pruistina Danuningrat said as a metropolis with a high level of human resources, the administration had to be more creative in marketing the capital as a tourist destination.
She said that the administration should shift the focus of its existing tourist attractions from venue-based opportunities like visiting museums, malls or amusement parks to local activities.
"The city has a lot of upsides that media could help sell, such as the festivals ," said Herna.
However, ASITA chairman Ben Sukma, who also attended the conference, said he doubted that festival-based tourism could be successful during the year`s national tourism campaign.
He said aside from being a monotonous tourism destination, various glitches hampered tourism services in the city.
He said one problem was that ASITA did not have any tour packages that included the city`s festivals.
"The organizers of these events already have their own experts," said Ben.
He added that the central government was yet to offer anything special to tourists in the Visit Indonesia Year program.
"Not even cleaner toilets at the city`s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport."
He said government officials had spent too much money on promotion and too little on improving existing services for tourists.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com (23 Januari 2008)
