Indonesia to highlight culinary, shopping experiences in attracting foreign visitors

In a bid to attract more foreign visitors, Indonesian government planned to intensify promotion on the nation's culinary and shopping experiences as the nation has abundance of potentialities from the two tourism elements.

With myriad of ethnic groups inhabiting dozen thousands of islands across its territory with their unique foods and cultural products that can be shopped on, Indonesian government realizes great potentialities that can be tapped on from their existence to accomplish targets in tourism sector.

Indonesian Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said that culinary and shopping experiences are apparently lucrative elements and essentially contribute to the success of tourism sector in a country.

The minister added that traditional culinary and shopping accounted for 45 percent from cultural attractions, the largest business portfolio that contributes 60 percent to overall businesses in tourism sector.

"Visitors' spending for culinary and shopping is significantly huge, very lucrative to be worked on," he said in a statement recently, cited to Thailand's success to grab huge number of visitors with its Thai Kitchen tagline featured in its tourism program.

Addressing government's aim to further promote national culinary and shopping experiences in tourism sector, Indonesian tourism ministry is actively taking part in recent travel and tourism expos abroad.

Taking the opportunity from the recent annual meeting of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in Madrid, Spain, Indonesian mission in the event showcased an attraction with a theme of "One Night in Makassar" that highlighted particular Indonesian culinary and cultural products from around Makassar, an Indonesian eastern region's major city.

Head of the ministry's task force to accelerate culinary and shopping tourism Vita Datau said in the event that promotion in Madrid is effective as the Spanish city is a benchmark for world's culinary and shopping tourism.

Deputy Minister Tourism Promotion for Europe, Middle East and Africa regions Nia Niscaya said in the same occasion that Indonesia has abundance of potentialities to open new market in culinary and shopping experiences so as to cope with the nation's tourism targets.

Indonesia won 12 from 16 categories contended in 2016 World Halal Tourism Award (WHTA), among them was an award for West Sumatra province's delicacy of Rendang.

Indonesia's Rendang and Nasi Goreng (fried rice) ranked first and second in CNN's world 50 best foods pooling in 2011.

For the same purpose, the ministry also sent a mission in 2017 New York Travel Times Travel Show (NYTTS), highlighted Indonesian coffee in the United States' largest trade show event.

"We were glad to see many people were willing to stand in lines just to taste Indonesian Arabica coffee provided in our exhibit. We know that price of global Arabica coffee is determined in New York," Nia Niscaya said in a statement.

The 2017 NYTTS event that took place last week was attended by 29,000 visitors comprised of travellers and tourism experts who shared their views in global tourism industry.

Some 500 exhibitors from various countries showcased the best of tour destinations and attractions in their respective nations in the 3-day event that lasted on Sunday.

Minister Arief Yahya said earlier that the United States is among 10 largest visitor contributor nations to Indonesia.

Through the coordinated efforts to grab more visitors from the United Sates, Indonesia expects to see some 380,000 visitors from that country this year, or higher than 251,221 ones recorded in 2015.

Indonesia is now in herculean efforts to attract foreign visitors coming into the archipelago country as tourism sector has been declared as the nation's core business, replacing oil and gas, coal and palm oil sectors which drove the country's economy in the past years.

Due to that, Southeast Asia's largest economy is now developing ten new ultimate tour destinations across the country, designed to par with its resort island of Bali in attracting visitors.

Indonesia expects to welcome 15 million foreign visitors this year, earn some 200 trillion rupiah (about 14.9 billion U.S. Dollars) in tourism sector. By 2019, the nation has set targets to welcome 20 million visitors, raises more than 24 billion U.S. Dollars generated from the sector.

source: Xinhua