Wishnutama Pede Indonesia Can Outperform Singapore In Tourism

JAKARTA - The government says that the current COVID-19 pandemic situation provides benefits for natural tourism destinations. This is because there is a trend of changing tourist destinations where people consider natural tourism to be a low risk compared to urban tourism. This condition will benefit Indonesia.

Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Wishnutama Kusubandio said Indonesia has good natural tourism power so that it can be maximized to attract tourists such as in Lake Toba, Labuan Bajo, Belitung, Bintan, and Bali.

Furthermore, Wishnutama said, compared to other countries Indonesia was the most superior in terms of the natural tourism sector, for example with Singapore.

"Urban tourism such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and New York is less profitable because it tends to be at high risk," he said, in a virtual discussion entitled 'Reactivation of the Tourism Sector and Creative Economy Entering New Habit Adaptation', Wednesday, July 22.

Wishnutama said, several tourist destination areas that have natural tourism have begun to prepare themselves to accept tourists, especially domestic tourists first. This preparation is accompanied by implementing strict and disciplined health protocols in welcoming the new era of normality.

Not only that, Wishnutama said, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the tourism trend from mass tourism to quality tourism by offering different experiences from tourist destinations to tourists.

"Actually, quality tourism does not have to be like a skyscraper. Indonesia has great potential to encourage quality tourism if it is able to prepare it," he explained.

Wishnutama believes that the tourism sector will recover in the near future along with the government's hard efforts to produce vaccines. Moreover, he said, if it could be mass produced and distributed properly, this sector would recover quickly.

On the other hand, Wishnutama admitted, Indonesian tourism was far behind neighboring countries such as Thailand, which was able to welcome more than 55 million foreign tourists per year. Meanwhile, Singapore 45 million people per year and Malaysia 40 million people per year.

"Indonesia is only 25 million and far behind, but we have great potential," he said.

Wishnutama said, because of this condition, the government continues to expand connectivity and seek potential tourists from other countries who can come to Indonesia while creating new tourism potential that can be learned during the current digital era through technology to observe the tourist interests of tourists today.

One of the efforts made by the government to improve the performance of the tourism sector is by creating 10 leading tourism destinations including Lake Toba, Labuan Bajo, and Borobudur Temple. However, that effort stumbled earlier in the year after the outbreak of the corona virus broke out.