23 Sep Paradise islands for tourists

Indonesia boasts diverse tourist attractions including beautiful countryside, wildlife, forests and coastline, beaches, fascinating cultural & historical monuments and nightlife. Bali is perhaps Indonesia’s most famous island and the world’s favourite tourist destination.

Indonesia’s tourism sector accounts for just 4% of the total economy, the Government aims to boost the tourism and hospitality sector by developing 10 “New Balis”. Strengths include several UNESCO world heritage sites like Komodo Island and Borobudur in Java, with “Wonderful Indonesia” the tourism tagline.

In 2019, Indonesia recorded 16.1 million foreign tourist arrivals, a 1.9% per cent increase over 2018. It is estimated that nearly 9% of Indonesia’s total national workforce is employed in the tourism sector.

From June 2020, Indonesia cautiously re-opened some tourist attractions across cities which had previously been closed because of the Covid19 lockdown. As a part of the taskforce for the acceleration of handling COVID-19, tourism and creative economy minister, Wishnutama Kusubandio, emphasised the three aspects of security, wellness and comfort to revive the spirit of tourism post-COVID and gain the trust of domestic and international tourists. Bali, the most famous, of the tourists hotspots in Indonesia, is yet to be opened to foreign tourists. The Indonesian government is speeding up vaccination efforts in Bali in hopes of achieving herd immunity quicker and reopen the island’s borders to international travellers under a free Covid-19 travel corridor by mid 2021.