CHARTER FLIGHTS, HALAL TOURISM: HOW INDONESIA IS WOOING CHINESE TOURISTS FROM THAILAND’S GRASP

From 2 million Chinese visitors this year, to five times as many in 2019, Indonesia’s plans to cash in on the Chinese tourism dollar are nothing if not ambitious. But for arrival figures to soar, it must first address a lack of flights

Sunny Huang is unimpressed with how long it took to fly from her hometown Chongqing to Jakarta. In January, the teacher, 22, took a red-eye flight from the Chinese city to Kuala Lumpur, where she stopped for eight hours before taking a two-hour connecting flight to Indonesia’s capital. She travelled for fifteen hours in total.

“It was tiring,” said Huang. “I slept at [Kuala Lumpur] airport because I took off from Chongqing at 11pm.”

Huang had not had the option of taking a direct flight – the nearest city offering a non-stop service to Jakarta was Guangzhou, 1,300km away.


Experts say experiences such as Huang’s illustrate a lack of air connectivity between many Chinese cities and Indonesia that could impede the Southeast Asian nation’s effort to attract 10 million Chinese tourists a year by 2019. In a bid to address the problem, Indonesia’s tourism ministry is offering incentives to national airlines to expand their services beyond China’s biggest cities to places such as Xian, Kunming, and Guilin.

Indonesia, a partner in China’s Belt and Road infrastructure development initiative to link Eurasia into a China-centred trading network, has also set itself a goal to be the top destination for Chinese Muslim tourists.

At the beginning of September, an Indonesian tourism delegation visited Chinese cities including Xian, Jinan and Beijing to seek deals and partnerships with travel agents and tour operators.

“China is a key market for us especially as we have a long-standing relationship, economic partnerships and proximity between us,” said Riyanto Sofyan, chairman of the halal tourism acceleration team at the Ministry of Tourism. The visit would “give Chinese tourism partners ... a platform to inform and influence the Chinese travel trade on all that Indonesia has to offer and, importantly, encourage them to include the destination in their brochures and programmes,” Sofyan said.

http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/busine...wooing-chinese


Indonesia emang negara ajaib.

Agama dijadikan ajian pemikat turis China