Three big events namely, the Lunar New Year, cross-border promotion of Wonderful Indonesia Festival and total solar eclipse have boost the number of inbound tourists, particularly from China.
I Gde Pitana, Deputy of Marketing Development of Foreign Tourism (Deputy BP3M) of Tourism Ministry, said that the majority of foreign tourists from China spent the Lunar New Year holiday in early February by visiting Bali as favorite destination, most of them came from Beijing and Heilongjiang Province using chartered planes.
“People from those regions, which temperature were under 15 degrees celcius at that time, preferred to celebrate the Lunar New Year at warm places such as Bali,” he said.
During the Lunar New Year, 23,000 tourists from 11 cities in China came to Bali using 65 units of chartered AB330 aircraft.
Foreign tourist visits through Immigration Checkpoint of Bandar Bintan Telani (BBT) in Lagoi stood at 8,700 people, whereas 580 Chinese tourists visited Sulawesi to spent their winter holiday.
The number of foreign visitors in January 2016 were 814,303, rose by 3.6% compared to the same period in 2015 of 785,937 foreign visitors. Besides China, Singapore and Europe are among the top countries on the list of countries of origin of foreign tourists.
Pitana also hoped that total solar eclipse on March 9 could boost this year’s number of foreign tourist visits to Indonesia which is targeted to reach 12 million people.