JAPAN National Tourism Organization (JNTO) will open an office in Indonesia by next year, its third in the region after Singapore and Thailand.
This year, JNTO added Indonesia, along with Vietnam and the Philippines, to its list of priority markets.
According to Motonari Adachi, executive director of JNTO Singapore office, the tourism bureau had already started the process of setting up the office in Jakarta, but had not yet decided if it should report to Singapore or Japan.
Currently, the Indonesia market is being overseen informally by JNTO’s Singapore office, which also looks after Malaysia and India. Its Bangkok office looks after the Philippines and Vietnam, apart from Thailand.
A full office in India is also under consideration, Adachi said.
During the first three months of the year, the Indonesian market grew 28.3 per cent to 13,479 visitors, compared with the same period in 2010 (pre-earthquake).
With a stable and booming economy, Indonesia is increasingly being seen as part of the next wave of emerging markets after BRIC, which analysts have coined as VISTA (Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Argentina).
Apart from leisure travel, Indonesia’s MICE market is also strong for Japan.
Toptour Corp’s manager-global marketing & sales, Streamlines Shinjuku Branch, Hisaki Maruyama, interviewed at IMEX in Frankfurt last week, said: “We used to have incentives from Europe from Japanese automobile companies in Europe; now we can’t find such incentives anymore. In contrast, the Japanese companies in Indonesia are seeing that their automobile production cannot catch up with demand.
“Indonesia has very good potential because its economic condition is good and its (political situation) is stable.”
