Indonesian tourists spent $10.1 billion when traveling within their country during Jan-Sept 2015, according to Arief Yahya, Indonesia’s tourism minister. The revenue is expected to further increase during the Christmas and New Year holiday season.
An estimate shows that domestic tourists in the country made as many as 187.3 million trips during the first nine months of this year with each spending approximately about $54 on hotels, transportation, food and souvenirs.
According to the tourism minister Yahya, the total number of trips by domestic tourists is likely to hit the 255 million mark in 2015, registering an increase of nearly 4 million from the previous year. A majority of the domestic tourists are from West, East and Central Java, Jakarta and Banten. All of these places are located on the most populous island of Indonesia, Java. Indonesians generally go on a domestic trip when schools are closed down for holidays like Chinese New Year, Idul Fitri, Christmas and New Year.
In the meantime, foreign tourist arrivals to the country have increased as well by 2.11 percent to 825,818 on year-on-year basis in October 2015, according to the latest data published by the Statistics Agency BPS in Indonesia. Furthermore, as many as 8 million foreign tourists visited the country during the first ten months in 2015, recording an increase of 3.4 percent on year-on-year basis.
The 2015 target of 10 million foreign visitors set for the Indonesia tourism by the government is not likely to be achieved because 2 million foreigners will have to visit during the last two months of the year. However, there might be a spurt in the number of foreign tourists visiting the country towards the close of 2015 because of the Great Batam and Great Bali events.
The data published by BPS and tourism ministry also indicate that the growth in foreign tourist arrivals during the first ten months of the year has been driven especially by travelers from Egypt. During this period, their number grew by as much as 22.48 percent, while Chinese, British, Indian and German tourists accounted for 18.85 percent, 15.38 percent, 10.38 percent and 7.35 percent, respectively.
While Indonesia tourism registered a growth this year of 3.38 percent to 8,017,589 in terms of foreign tourist arrivals during the period January to October 2015, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore recorded negative growth of 9.4 percent, 4.1 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively. However, Thailand recorded the highest increase in foreign tourist arrivals of 24.7 percent.