Tourism operators call for help
Indah Setiawati , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta
Companies that run resorts in the Thousand Islands regency say their businesses are dying because of the small number of visitors to the area.
The problem is caused by a lack of accessibility and promotion, a workshop heard on Tuesday.
Jhonny Lapian of PT Buana Bintang Samudra, the management of Putri Island resort, said the number of visitors to the regency had been declining since 2005, when the tsunami hit Aceh.
“After the tsunami our profits started to decline. And now we are not making profits at all. The major problem is transportation,” he said.
Putri resort now only provides a fast boat on weekends when people come for short vacations, he said.
Providing a boat on weekdays was too costly for the company because it was not getting the 30 passengers necessary to make the trips worthwhile.
Haznil Maulana of PT Pantara Wisata Jaya, the management of Pantara Island resort, said the company now only operated East Pantara Island and had closed its operations on West Pantara Island.
“We closed our business on West Pantara Island because we could not afford its running costs,” he said.
Sahat Sitorus, the head of Thousand Islands’ Tourism Agency, said that previously 11 resorts had operated in the regency. However, when the financial crisis hit Indonesia in 1997-1998, six resorts in the northern part of the regency had closed down because they could no longer afford their running costs, he said.
Sahat acknowledged that transportation had hindered the development of marine tourism on the islands, which comprise resorts and residental islands.
“Tourists who go to residential islands need comfortable and quick boats, while wooden boats that are currently available from Muara Angke are not comfortable, and are slow and lack safety facilities,” he said.
Data from his office shows 141,000 tourists visited the islands last year, 3,316 of whom were from Europe and Asia.
The figure increased slightly from 130,000 tourists in 2008.
Faalah K. Djafar, the president director of PT Seabreez, which manages Bidadari Island, said he hoped Jakarta administration could support the promotion of the Thousand Islands by developing an integrated tourism website for the regency.
Sapta Nirwandar, the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s director general for marketing, said he would do
his best to help promote the Thousand Islands at a number of tourism exhibitions.
He urged Jakarta administration to work on ways to increase the popularity of the regency.
“We have to work on a rescue program. If not, the Thousand Islands will disappear from the Indonesian tourism map and become only residential islands,” he said.
Sapta said the six islands that currently had resorts should immediately be promoted as icons of the regency.
Governor Fauzi Bowo said the city would promote the Thousand Islands regency as a place for
meetings and conferences for companies and organizations. Usually, companies who want to get away from the city for work meetings chose areas in Bogor, West Java, such as Puncak.
Source: The Jakarta Post