09/02/12, 18:49:39 EST

  e-mail this article

Indonesia needs more than pretty pictures to promote tourism abroad

thejakartapost.com

Tourism has become a high profile business in most countries in the world, including Indonesia. The industry is often associated with a broad potential for boosting employment as well as creating and developing secondary and tertiary businesses.

It is understandable then, based on such a promise, governments will focus on promoting tourism in their respective countries. The breadth of the scope of tourism promotion varies from country to country, depending on the extent of structural organization of the country involved, and on the needs as perceived by the countries' authorities and business communities.

Take Indonesia. In cities and areas usually visited by tourists there have been increasing numbers of hotels with their foreign-language-speaking staff -- and an inevitable growth of alternative accommodation and free-lance guides.

The industry is however, fragile and unpredictable. We have seen how SARS (Severe and Acute Respiratory Syndrome), and bombings in Bali and Jakarta were each invariably followed by a drastic drop in the numbers of incoming tourists. Yet those in the industry never stop hoping that soon they will return in droves.

One aspect which has so far failed to be included in the equation of tourism promotion is the need to review the disembodied manner the promotion campaign is conducted. Loads of audio-visual materials are continually produced, bombarding the international public with images of beautiful beaches, scenic mountains, colorful religious ceremonies (in Bali's case), good-looking men and women in attractive traditional costumes, with traditional music in the background. They do not entirely depict how Indonesians live their lives, but the message is, "We promise this is what you'll see when you visit us".

In brief, we voluntarily present ourselves as exotic. The exoticism, it has been proven time and time again, never fails to attract people.

A true enough concept, except that if something remains exotic, it will never become the known, even to a limited degree. So when rumor starts that Indonesia is a hotbed for terrorists, it soon becomes "a fact", because people do not know any better. And the governments of some countries -- Australia included -- in order to protect themselves from being blamed by their constituents, are driven to activate a travel warning to Indonesia.

The Australian government's travel warning has unfortunate implications for many sectors in Indonesia. First and foremost of course, the hospitality industry itself, which employs a great number of people, and its affiliated industries which are operated by equally numerous individuals. It also has a negative impacts on the studies of Indonesian in schools. Schools teaching Indonesian, which normally send their senior-year students to Indonesia every year, have had to send them to Malaysia instead, because the travel warning not only has the potential of rendering the insurance invalid, but more importantly, it is potentially litigious for schools to ignore it.

This further hinders young people in Australia learning about Indonesia first-hand, by stopping close contact with the people and their culture. Ironically, this kind of contact is exactly what is needed to make tourism promotion effective.

Let us ponder the issue of a travel warning. The Australian government issued the warning, because after the 2002 Bali bombing, which killed 202 foreigners, mostly Australians, Canberra came under fire for not warning its citizens about the danger of traveling to Bali at the time. So now, as soon as it smells gunpowder and detects a stir of suspicious activity in any parts of Indonesia, travel warnings of various degrees are announced.

The most high-profile terrorism act so far was committed in New York City, on Sept. 11, 2001, yet Australians have never been officially warned against traveling to the U.S. Instead it has been the U.S. which activated a stringent screening process on those entering the country. And Australians still head for Britain following the July 2006 London Underground bombing.

Is Australian government unfairly picking on Indonesia?

It is most likely a case of the known and the familiar, on the one hand, and the unknown and the exotic on the other. Even those who have never been to the U.S. and Britain, feel that they know the countries, the people and the systems well. They are thus not deterred by the knowledge that acts of terrorism, robbery, even murders have been committed there; they feel confident they will be able to negotiate their way around any danger which may be lurking their way.

Conversely, the Americans and the British at home do not have to bombard people in other countries with tourism campaigns to exhort them to visit the U.S. and Britain. However, once there, foreign visitors, notably from Australia, will easily find the existing and continually improved infrastructure to help them negotiate their way around.

In the meantime, despite living next door to each other, Australia and Indonesia are quasi-strangers. They hardly know a thing about each other.

For a country which aspires to develop its tourism, Indonesia needs to better develop its public relations skills, beyond projecting beautiful images. Not because the images are not true, but because they are only a small part of the real thing. And unfortunately, they do come across as just that, when placed alongside images of the aftermath of a terrorism act. The two sets of images, held against the sea of the unknown, do not correlate. People become wary.

To offset this wariness, Indonesia needs to shed light on the hitherto sea of the unknown. The truth is, there is a wide, wide world of interesting people and places -- some beautiful, some intriguing, and a fair slice ugly as well -- that would make foreign visitors welcome if given the chance.

How to include all this into a tourism campaign? A more integrated approach is necessary, where the tourism authority cooperates with education sponsorship, for example, or where it extends its assistance to other social and cultural events, which will in turn appeal to people who are simply curious, as well as the informed.

In terms of Australia, when there is a sufficient mass who feel comfortable and at ease with Indonesia, no amount of travel warnings will stop Australians visiting the country. And hopefully the government will eventually no longer feel the pressure to issue one.

 Printable Version  | published Aug 30, 2007