by Abu Hanifah
JAKARTA, Oct.4 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia recorded impressive foreign tourist visits in August and in previous months this year, giving bright prospect for the government to further boost the tourism sector as the nation's essential economy propeller in coming years.
The archipelago country in Southeast Asia posted a significant foreign tourist visits figure of 1.03 million, or 13.19 percent higher than the same period last year. The total figure throughout the first eight months added up to 7.36 million, Indonesia's central statistics agency said on Monday.
The government set the target of foreign tourists arrivals this year at 12 million people, or 15 percent higher than last year.
The goal was set based on optimistic prediction for the economy for 2016. Indonesia is expected to see a 5.2-percent growth this year, compared with 4.78 percent achieved last year.
Indonesia has seen impressive growth of foreign tourist arrivals in the past few years, with 8.8 million recorded in 2013 and 9.4 million in 2014.
Tourists from China contributed the largest number of foreign tourists visiting Indonesia in the first eight months this year at almost 15 percent, followed by Australia and Singapore.
The figures have shown huge potential for Indonesia in further tapping the tourism sector to propel the nation's economy amid downturns in its key sectors of oil and gas, coals and palm oil.
"For this year I want the growth in tourism sector can be accelerated so as to highly support national economic growth," Indonesian President Joko Widodo said recently.
The country's tourism ministry is taking various measures to attract tourists.
Besides promoting domestic tour destination, the ministry also implemented digital systems to analyze tourist characteristics.
Aligning with other ministries, the tourism ministry is now developing 10 "New Bali" tour destinations, designed to have equal capabilities with Indonesia's famous resort island of Bali.
The new destinations were Borobudur, Mandalika, Labuhan Bajo, Bromo-Tengger-Semeru, Kepulauan Seribu, Toba, Wakatobi, Tanjung Lesung, Morotai, and Tanjung Kelayang.
To provide better accommodations for visitors, the ministry has recently synergized the management of 36 hotels operated by state-run firms.
Through the management consolidation of state-run hotels under the new business flag of Hotel Indonesia Group (HIG), the ministry expected that tourists can get the best of Indonesian hospitality and services during their stay in the country.
Indonesia's Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said recently that investments in the tourism sector continued to expand from 700 million U.S. dollars in 2014 to 1 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.
As of the first half this year investments were recorded at 858 million U.S. dollars, expected to reach 1.5 billion U.S. dollars by year end.
The minister said the tourism sector now contributes 10 percent to the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the fourth largest sector to make earnings for the nation.
Indonesia's tourism sector was expected to contribute more than 24 billion U.S. dollars to the state coffers and welcome 20 million foreign tourists by 2019.
