Tourist arrivals up in Indonesia in the first six months of 2008

Aug 1, 2008, 10:14 GMT

Jakarta - The number of foreign tourists that visited Indonesia in the first half of 2008 rose 11.66 per cent to 2.9 million compared with the same period last year, a senior official said Friday.

Rusman Hermawan, chief of the country's Central Bureau of Statistics, said the number of foreign tourist arrivals in Indonesia in June stood at 529,100, or an increase by 3.95 per cent over the previous month and an increase of 6.22 per cent over the same month last year when 498,100 tourists visited the country.

Indonesia has targeted 7 million foreign visitors this year, owing to the 15-million-dollar Visit Indonesia Year 2008 programme launched late last year, and expected to earn up to 6.4 billion dollars in foreign exchange.

Government officials earlier predicted that the number of tourist arrivals in the second half will exceed the January-June figures.

In the last few years Indonesia's tourism sector has been hard hit by a string of terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis and bird flu outbreaks. Domestic sectarian violence has also damaged the country's reputation as a safe destination.

In an attempt to help boost the declining numbers of foreign visitors to the country Indonesia has extended it's list of countries that receive visas-on-arrival.