Indonesia Developing World Cruise Destinations

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - With over 17,500 islands and water areas of 70 percent, Indonesia -- which owns the world’s longest stretch of beaches reaching 81,000 km -- is building at least 66 maritime ecotourism destinations to attract tourists on board cruise ships.

The development of the world cruise destinations is part of the country’s efforts to advance its maritime tourism and boost foreign tourist arrivals which have been showing an upward trend of late.

"Now is the time for us to become a world cruise tourism destination because we have a big potential in this sector," Director General for Marketing Affairs of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism Sapta Nirwandar said.

The Indonesian government, during the celebration of New Year’s Eve last December, officially announced its optimistic target of attracting 7.7 million foreign tourists into the country in 2011, up about 10 percent from 7,000,571 arrivals in 2010. In order to help the country achieve its tourism targets, the government is developing various tourism-related sectors, including its maritime ecotourism. As regards, Indonesia affirms its readiness to become a world cruise destination as part of the development of its maritime tourism.

The director general said his office was working hard to develop the potential while declaring that Indonesia was ready to serve cruise ships from various countries.

"We hope that in a not-too-distant time at least two cruise ships will visit the country every day. Besides making calls at Padang Bai, Benoa (Bali), Jakarta, Lembar (Lombok-West Nusa Tenggara-NTB), Makassar (South Sulawesi), Komodo (East Nusa Tenggara-NTT) and Semarang (Central Java), the world cruise ships are also expected to call at other 66 destinations such as the Tanjung Puting (Central Kalimantan) which has of late attracted many world cruises," Sapta Nirwandar said.

Sapta said his office has seriously developed cruise tourism in Indonesia in the last eight years together with other maritime tourism stakeholders.

"This endeavor has begun to show results. Now, the number of world cruises’ calls has increased to 90 a year, from only 20 calls in 2002," the director general said. After all, the number of destinations visited by cruise ships has also increased from only three in the past several years to 66 destinations now.

Therefore, the marketing directorate general will continue its efforts to develop the country’s cruise tourism and to improve the image and competitiveness of Indonesia as a world cruise destination. For this purpose, the directorate general will use the Indonesian tourist resort island of Bali as a turn-around port while preparing others so that Indonesia would be able to serve large-scale cruises with big number of passengers.

It will also increase the quality of its services, synchronize and harmonize regulations, including polices in facilitating the visits of world cruise ships. Sapta said that priority would be given to the Benoa port of Bali to be developed as an international standard turn-around port which could accommodate world cruise ships and serve as a starting point for the development of maritime tourism into the eastern regions of Indonesia.