Trianto Sunarjati of Seta Tours and Travel said while there is no doubt Chinese tourists are enamoured of Yogyakarta’s history and culture, their numbers are a long way from where they once were.
“The golden era for the Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese markets was before 1998, especially in terms of coming to Yogyakarta,” he said, referring to the Asian financial crisis and the riots in May that year targeting Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese.
“Since then, [numbers of tourists from China were] getting less and less, but they have picked up since one or two years ago.”
Trianto said that while the government had poured funds into physical infrastructure, the drop-off in visits over the past two decades had affected the industry’s capacity to handle Chinese tourists.
“One of the important things we have to develop now is human resources, especially Mandarin-speaking tour guides, if we are catering more to this market,” he said. “Especially when it comes to the new international airport, there is a lot we have to do.”
The Yogyakarta International Airport, developed at a cost of US$432.64 million, will be able to handle 50 million passengers annually, according to The Jakarta Post – a much-needed alternative to the city’s Adisutjipto International Airport, which has a capacity of 2.1 million passengers per year but has been straining to cater for almost three times that number.
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Tourist operators and Tourism Ministry officials speaking to This Week in Asia said they were hopeful the new airport would see international airlines offering more direct routes to Yogyakarta, with some lamenting the lack of direct flights from China.
They also expect this will reduce the cost of getting there by air while ensuring a longer stay, as many Chinese tourists stop over in Singapore or Jakarta before flying to the Javanese city.
“Access is so important,” Trianto says. “And for price, it’s still a [prime driver] for someone who wants to take a trip abroad. If the price of a route is not good, of course there will be fewer people flying it.”
