YOGYAKARTA- Security and convenience in a country are key to tourism development, including in Indonesia. Unfortunately, in some cases, tourists, especially foreign tourists, do not feel secure and convenient to visit in Indonesia. This is caused by some bombing terrors that have occured, including the recent suicide bombing in Solo on Sunday (25/9).
"Although I believe the bombing in Solo would not affect the progress of Indonesian tourism for a long time, but we admit security issues and convenience are the key to progress and develop our tourism," tourism observer who is also lecturer at Department of International Relations Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Drs. Usmar Salam, MIS., said on Monday (26/9).
Usmar Salam added that the synergy among actors in tourism development is also needed. In tourism development, many actors are involved either in the government, non-government or community.
Usmar assessed the success of Malaysia that ranks higher than Indonesia in tourism is caused by the high synergy between actors in tourism development in Malaysia. Tourism development not only depends on the Ministry of Culture and Tourism but also has very strong linkages with other Ministries.
"The issue of synergy is a very difficult to be built by the Indonesian people not only in the course of tourism development, but it is seen almost in all sectors," Usmar said.
On that occasion, Usmar exemplified the progress of China and Malaysia in the field of tourism, especially from the aspect of the Receiving Tourism Countries. Presenty, tourists visiting China increases, so it is likely in the next five years it could become the largest tourist recipient country, defeating France and the U.S. Meanwhile, five years ago, Usmar said, China was not even the top ten tourists’ recipient countries.
"In addition to the Receiving Tourism Country, China is also the Sending Tourism Country, because this year the Chinese tourists do tourism outbound, achieving more than 55 million tourists," he explained.
Besides, Malaysia two years ago did not make the top 10 foreign tourists recipient countries, but in 2010 it came into the ninth place of receiving tourism country. Indonesia is the 34th.
To analyze the development of Indonesian tourism, Usmar saw it would be more interesting if compared to Malaysia. Fifteen years ago, Malaysia’s tourism was far behind compared with Indonesia’s, but at present, Indonesia is far behind Malaysia in terms of foreign tourists receiving country as well as competitiveness index. From the observation of UN-WTO, in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index released by the World Economic Forum (WEF), Indonesia is the 74th and Malaysia is the 36th.