Visit Indonesia Year 2008 not a failure, says the minister
September 16th, 2008
The Visit Indonesia Year 2008 program does not fail, Minister of Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik said at a hearing with House of Representatives said here Monday.
“According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, in the first semester of this year, the number of foreign tourists has reached 3.4 million. If the number continues to increase, by the end of the year, there would be 6.4 million foreign tourists visiting Indonesia,” Wacik said.
The number expected to be reached by the end of the year is 600 thousand, still below the target of the ministry of 7 million.
“To successfully reach that target, we are trying to make some breakthroughs in our promotions,” said Wacik, adding that the result of a promotion is not instantly, but takes time.
Wacik giving an example said the Film Festival and Vegetarian Food Festival in Batam are good ways of promotion.
In the hearing with Commission X, the General Director of Marketing of Visit Indonesia Year 2008 program Sapta Nirwandar said Indonesia uses quite different methods of promotion.
“We don`t really rely on advertisements on television. We use a strategy we called “marketing guerilla”. We come to our main marketing target sharing about our programs,” he explained.
The Minister also said that with Indonesia`s bad experience of bombing incidents and natural disasters, the number of foreign tourists until today is proof that Indonesia still has a chance to reach its tourist targets.
“Therefore, we have remain opetimistic that we will successfully reach our target,” Wacik added.
(*)
COPYRIGHT © 2008
Source: http://www.antara.co.id
Entry Filed under: World Tourism News
Trackback this post