THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Mil­len­ni­als fuel RI tourism wave

Mil­len­ni­als fuel RI tourism wave

When it comes to trav­el­ing, Bali-based cus­tomer-ser­vice ex­ec­u­tive Cinca Pa­tria only needs her smart­phone to take care of al­most ev­ery­thing, in­clud­ing book­ing flights and ho­tel rooms.

As an avid bud­get trav­eler, Cinca said she fre­quently looked out for pro­mo­tion pro­grams at on­line travel sites such as Trav­eloka and Book­ing.com in the hope of get­ting the most for her money.
“I travel a lot and go abroad at least once a year. With on­line book­ings, I have full au­thor­ity over how to ar­range my bud­get,” the 26-year-old told The Jakarta Post over the phone on Fri­day.
Cinca is a text-book ex­am­ple of tech­savvy mil­len­ni­als, the likely game chang­ers in the global travel and tourism sec­tor, as iden­ti­fied in the World Eco­nomic Fo­rum’s (WEF) Travel and Tourism Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port 2017.
The lat­est edi­tion of the bi­en­nial re­port, pub­lished ear­lier this week, sug­gested that mil­len­ni­als would be­come the core cus­tomer base for the in­dus­try in the next five to 10 years. Their spend­ing on busi­ness flights is pre­dicted to ac­count for 50 per­cent of global travel by 2020 and to main­tain that share for the sub­se­quent 15 years.
While In­done­sia saw its po­si­tion jump by eight places to 42nd in the re­port’s com­pet­i­tive­ness in­dex, mainly as a re­sult of its de­ci­sion to loosen visa reg­u­la­tions for for­eign tourists, ques­tions re­main re­gard­ing whether it has done enough to tap op­por­tu­ni­ties among this grow­ing cus­tomer base.
In the re­sort is­land of Bali, the coun­try’s most pop­u­lar get­away des­ti­na­tion, the dom­i­na­tion of mil­len­nial trav­el­ers from coun­tries such as Aus­tralia, Malaysia and Sin­ga­pore, is vis­i­ble in terms of vol­ume but not in spend­ing, at least for now, said As­so­ci­a­tion of In­done­sian Tour and Travel Agents (ASITA) chair­man As­nawi Ba­har.
As­nawi, how­ever, still con­sid­ers them to be a huge op­por­tu­nity, as he en­cour­ages lo­cal hos­pi­tal­ity providers to team up not only with on­line travel ser­vices but also those that of­fer in­no­va­tive busi­ness mod­els, such as in­ter­na­tional hol­i­day rental gi­ant Airbnb, to ex­pand their mar­ket­ing out­reach.
“Th­ese young trav­el­ers cur­rently don’t re­ally spend much. But, we should be flex­i­ble in re­spond­ing to fu­ture trends,” he said.
In­done­sian Ho­tel and Res­tau­rant As­so­ci­a­tion (PHRI) chair­man Hariyadi Sukam­dani, mean­while, high­lighted the im­por­tance of on­line cam­paigns for the in­dus­try. The mil­len­nial mar­ket, he said, was sen­si­tive to on­line re­views of ho­tels or other fa­cil­i­ties, as well as price, as they were all com­pa­ra­ble on­line.
Last year, In­done­sia wel­comed 11.5 mil­lion for­eign tourists, with those from China top­ping the list at 1.43 mil­lion ar­rivals.
Pres­i­dent Joko “Jokowi” Wi­dodo has set his sights on tourism as one of the main sec­tors to be de­vel­oped un­der his ad­min­is­tra­tion. His ad­min­is­tra­tion is eye­ing 20 mil­lion for­eign tourist ar­rivals in 2019, with this year’s tar­get stand­ing at 15 mil­lion.
The ef­forts to boost the tourism sec­tor, how­ever, have met with many chal­lenges, in­clud­ing a lack of in­fra­struc­ture and ca­pa­ble hu­man re­sources.
For ex­am­ple, only 34 per­cent of Chi­nese tourists come in di­rect flights to lo­cal air­ports, much lower than the 82 per­cent recorded in Thai­land.
With that, it is no sur­prise that the WEF re­port ranked In­done­sia’s air trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture at 36th po­si­tion out of 136 economies sur­veyed, stand­ing be­hind re­gional ri­vals Sin­ga­pore (sixth), Thai­land (20th) and Malaysia (21st). Those three coun­tries also fare bet­ter than In­done­sia in the re­port’s over­all po­si­tion at 13th, 26th and 34th, re­spec­tively.
Separately, the Tourism Min­istry’s deputy min­is­ter for over­seas pro­mo­tion I Gde Pi­tana said while ef­forts to im­prove in­fra­struc­ture were on­go­ing, the gov­ern­ment had also in­ten­si­fied mea­sures to ease ac­cess for for­eign tourists en­ter­ing the coun­try, in­clud­ing through the in­tro­duc­tion of a free-visa pol­icy for trav­el­ers from 169 coun­tries.
“Com­pet­i­tive­ness is re­ally our mis­sion at the mo­ment so we can stand a chance in the in­ter

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