JAKARTA - Indonesia has almost all the capital to become a major force in Southeast Asian tourism.
The country has thousands of islands, world-class destinations, cultural wealth, and landscapes that are difficult to match with other countries in the region. However, the latest data shows a more complicated reality.
In 2025, Thailand recorded around 33 million foreign tourist visits. Malaysia reached 26.6 million. Vietnam jumped to 21.2 million.
Even Singapore, which has a smaller area than Bali, managed to attract around 16.9 million international tourists.
Indonesia is in fifth place with around 15.4 million foreign tourists.
The figure is certainly not a failure. But in the context of regional competition, the question that arises becomes increasingly difficult to avoid: why are countries with tourism resources as large as Indonesia still lagging behind?
Tourism industry observer Giostanovlatto assessed that Indonesia's problem is not in the lack of destinations, but rather how the destinations are connected, marketed, and prepared.
"Indonesia has always talked about potential. The problem is, regional tourism is no longer competing at the potential level. What is competing now is the execution," he said.
Thailand has spent decades building a tourist ecosystem that is relatively easy for tourists to understand. Infrastructure is developing, flights are connected, and branding is consistently maintained. Vietnam is moving even more aggressively. The country is expanding air connectivity, simplifying entry access, and intensively promoting destinations.
Indonesia faces a different problem.
For years, Bali has been the main engine that supports national tourism. This dependence produces a paradox. Indonesia has thousands of islands, but Indonesia's international tourism experience often remains very concentrated.
"For years, Bali has managed to cover many structural weaknesses in other destinations. But Bali cannot be a tourism strategy for the whole of Indonesia," said Giostanovlatto.
Outside Bali, tourists often face more complex challenges: limited connectivity, high costs of inter-destination travel, and uneven infrastructure.
Another problem that is increasingly decisive is the issue of ease.
Modern tourists don't just buy beauty. They buy access, certainty, efficiency, and convenience.
In this context, Singapore provides an interesting lesson. The city-state may not have volcanoes, tropical beaches, or terraced rice paddies. But Singapore has something that is increasingly important in the global travel industry: efficiency.
"People often ask how Singapore can beat Indonesia. The question is probably wrong. Tourists don't always choose the most beautiful place. Very often they choose the easiest place," said Giostanovlatto.
In the end, Indonesia's challenge may not be simply increasing the number of tourists.
The challenge is to turn the natural advantage into a truly competitive system.
Because in Southeast Asia today, tourism competition does not seem to be determined by who has the best destination.
But by who makes the journey feel the easiest.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
