Inforial (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta ●
Fri, December 16, 2022
Indonesia’s first online travel agent (OTA) tiket.com, together with the Center for Data and Systems Information (Pusdatin) of the Tourism and Creative Industry Ministry (Kemenparekraf), presented the research data on the tourism industry at the “New Paradigm of Indonesia Tourism Industry Trend 2023” national webinar, held on Tuesday.
In his opening remarks, Tourism and Creative Industry Minister Sandiaga Uno said that despite the challenges wrought by the pandemic, it also presented opportunities that could be leveraged to boost the industry’s recovery. Together with tiket.com, the ministry has identified Indonesia’s new tourism paradigm: Wellness Tourism, Work from Destination, Culture Immersion and Off-Grid Travel.
“Quality will be the key driving factor in making travel decisions, which is often related to mindfulness, sensation seeking, cultural immersion or booking accommodations,” Ni Wayan Giri Adnyani, the tourism ministry’s secretary, highlighted in her presentation at the webinar.
Giri Adnyani added that travelers now preferred “Local Before Global” destinations and contactless services that prioritized health and safety. These travelers were also generally more sustainability-minded.
“There needs to be focus and priority on indicators or pillars that need improvements to promote quality tourism in Indonesia,” she underlined.
Local Before Global is also a creative economy paradigm, along with Digital Acceleration and Metaverse Era, and central to collaborations to revive the industry.
“We will continue to support the 3G programs: GERCEP (Move Fast), GEBER (Move Together) and GASPOL (Work on Every Potential). We will pursue similar collaborations with tiket.com and other strategic partners to develop core programs in 2023,” added Sandiaga.
The joint research by tiket.com and Pusdatin Kemenparekraf also showed that Jakarta, Surabaya, and Medan continued to dominate domestic travel. Outbound tourism from Indonesia showed an 81.8 percent increase in bookings and a 90.9 percent increase in passengers. Domestic air ticket sales also showed improvement from 2020, indicating stable consumer behavior.
Meanwhile, staycations have grown in popularity, with starred hotels seeing a 49.85 percent increase in occupancy, according to a Statistics Indonesia (BPS) study from May 2021-May 2022. This trend was also reflected in villa and apartment bookings on tiket.com, with reservations doubling during the pandemic to 204 percent.
The three regions with the highest number of staycations were Jakarta, West Java, and East Java.
The average number of bookings and passengers per specific category, such as transportation (including rentals), accommodation, and offline and online events showed a positive growth trend and a decline in cancellations. These indicated that consumer confidence was also growing and contributing to the growth in the travel and tourism industry.
Contributing to the accelerated recovery of the tourism and creative economy industries is synergized strategizing among all stakeholders, from the government to the private sector. Initiatives and partnerships between various sectors play an important role in facilitating a holistic and inclusive approach that promotes innovation, digitalization, and culture as important capital.
As one of its partners, tiket.com has committed to supporting the tourism ministry by anticipating the industry’s shifting trends and challenges in 2023.
“In addition to launching various promotions to increase public interest in traveling, tiket.com also supports various government initiatives, especially empowerment programs for business owners and programs for researchers. Together, we are aiming for solid recovery and growth for the tourism industry,” said Gaery Undarsa, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer a cofounder and chief marketing officer of tiket.com.
“We hope this collaboration between tiket.com and Kemenparekraf heralds a new beginning in Kemenparekraf’s policy-making process. We would like to see more evidence-based policies that are based on not just official statistics, but also big data from industry partners,” remarked Addin Maulana, Expert Researcher from the Economics, Industry, Services, and Trade Research Center at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN).
The webinar also featured presentations from other speakers, including “New Paradigm of Indonesian Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities to Improve the Quality of the Tourism Industry” by Giri Adnyani and Addin Maulana, and “Economic Review 2022 and Outlook 2023” by economic observer Tauhid Ahmad from the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF).
