Indonesia woos Qatari tourists

DOHA • The Republic of Indonesia has drawn up a road map to woo visitors from Qatar to its tourist destinations.

The idea is to organise a Travel Mart for Middle East with an extra focus on Qatar. The discussion on the proposal is progressing with Qatar Airways, revealed Andang Pramana Sosodro , Charge d' Affaires of Indonesian Embassy.

Talking to The Peninsula, Sosodro said Indonesia is already working on a mega tourism package to coincide with the 100th anniversary of their country's Independence movement early next year. The campaign will be launched on January 1, 2008 with a grand opening gala night and a tourism exhibition at Jakarta. More than 100 further events and festivals on numerous islands of the archipelago, including sports, cultural, lifestyle are in the pipeline, he said.

"Indonesia has been registering a growing rate of tourist inflow from the Middle East over the last few years. However, the flow is not matching to that of some of our neighbouring countries. It is against this backdrop we decided to go in for an aggressive marketing. "Visit Indonesia Year 2008" will be a good start in selling Indonesia's niche tourism brands", he said.

Sosodro said that nearly 5 m foreign tourist had visited Indonesia during the year 2006. Of this, an estimated 56,000 tourists were from the Middle East. This is against 38,337 visitors during 2004. Indonesia targets a minimum of 6m visitors from across the globe in 2007.

"In the first seven months of 2007, Indonesia attracted a little more than 2.5m guests from the world over, which marked a distinct increase of around 13 per cent. The year 2008 is to add another 20 per cent. And the booming Qatar is certainly our target", he said.

Comprising more than 17, 500 islands, Indonesia is among the most beautiful multi-faceted and fascinating holiday destinations in the world. It offers beautiful beaches for swimming, trekking tours through spectacular volcanic landscapes, one of the most beautiful golf courts and diving in unique underwater worlds. Now, we have decided to aggressively market this.

Sosodro added: "Qatar's booming economy is already having it bearing on Indonesia when our exports touched $69.8m in 2006. This was against the $35.49m registered in 2004. Indonesia's workforce has registered a 20 per cent increase in Qatar in 2006, compared to previous year.