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Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Five months since the WHO declared a pandemic state, which resulted in a ban on travel to foreign countries. This has a very significant impact on the national tourism sector, especially those that depend on visits from foreign tourists.
The consequence of the policies of each country in the world has caused the visits of foreign tourists (tourists) to Indonesia to be drastically reduced. Data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) shows that the number of foreign tourists visiting Indonesia in August was 165 thousand, 89% less (year-on-year) compared to the same month last year.
In fact, before the Covid-19 outbreak spread to various countries around the world, visits by foreign tourists to the country had significantly decreased. In February, the total number of visits by foreign tourists reached 864 thousand.
This figure decreased 32% (monthly) from January which was recorded at 1.27 million and fell by 30% (year-on-year) from February 2019 which was recorded at 1.24 million visits.
The number of visits by foreign tourists has continued to decline since then. The worst happened after the WHO attributed official pandemic status to the Covid-19 outbreak on March 11. The number of foreign tourists visiting, which was initially still above 400,000, also immediately fell below 200,000 when the PSBB was implemented in various regions of the country last April.
In the period January-August 2020, the total number of visits by foreign tourists reached 3.41 million. While for the same period last year, foreign tourists who visited Indonesia reached 10.71 million. This means a drop of 68.17% (year-on-year).
The case of Covid-19, which continues to increase in Indonesia, is also in the spotlight of the world. The increase in daily cases in the country continues to increase significantly since the PSBB in several cities, especially Jakarta, relaxed last June.
As of today, the total number of Covid-19 patients in the country has reached 287 thousand people. A total of 10,740 people died. The increase in cases that have reached 4,000 per day how can the confidence of foreign tourists come to Indonesia?
If the trend of domestic and global cases continues to increase, the activity of traveling abroad will remain depressed. The sustainability of the global and national tourism sector is seriously threatened
In addition, this sector also has links with other sectors such as transport, for example. If under normal conditions many foreign tourists visit Indonesia by air, now more are traveling by land.
Most of the foreign tourists visiting Indonesia are neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Timor Leste, which have direct land borders with Indonesia, so they can be reached by land.
A total of 58.3 thousand foreign tourists (35.3%) who visited RI came from Malaysia. While 89.4 thousand or 54.2% came from Timor Leste.
Although the tourism sector contributes to Indonesia’s GDP is not too large compared to neighboring countries, the contribution to labor absorption cannot be underestimated.
Data from the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy in 2019 shows that the absorption of labor in the tourism sector last year reached 13 million or contributed to 10.3% of the total national workers.
If the foreign exchange contribution of the tourism sector last year reached 19,700 million dollars, with the slowness of the national tourism sector as it is today, its contribution will certainly fall significantly.
Assuming that there are between 4 and 5 million foreign tourists visiting it, the foreign exchange contribution of the tourism sector is likely to only reach around US $ 5.4 billion.
Even Bap barely’s prediction is even scarier that this year visits by foreign tourists will drop sharply by just 4 million with revenues in the tourism sector of just US $ 3.3 billion – US $ 4.9 billion.
CNBC INDONESIA INVESTIGATION TEAM
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