Foreign Tourist Numbers Down: Indonesia

According to the Indonesian Minister of Tourism Jero Wacik the country's tourism industry had gradually recovered from the decline after the Asian financial crisis in 1997 but the suicide bombing attacks in October last year on the restaurants in Bali and then other blasts have stopped the improvement.

The number of foreign tourists coming to Indonesia in the first five months this year was down by 8.77 percent to 1.53 million people from the same period last year, the country's Statistic Bureau said. Interestingly the Statistics Bureau has the number of foreign visitors coming into the island resort of Bali as having decrease by 1.84 percent to 107,700 people in May. We are now in the beginning of July and somehow I think the Bureau should start catching up!.

Head of the Bureau Rusman Heriawan said that we have not seen any signal of a bright point on the amount of foreign tourist's arrivals into Indonesia. The vast archipelago country targets 6 million foreign tourist arrivals this year, far less than the targets of neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia of respectively 8 and 20 million people.

I really don,t care about these latest figures coming out of Jakarta. Arrivals in Bali are on the increase albeit slowly and it will become even better. So, what are you doing sitting in front of your computer screen reading this when you should be on the phone to your travel agent booking a holiday to Bali!.