|
The Culture and Tourism Ministry signed an agreement Thursday
with Muhammadiyah allowing the country's second largest Muslim
organization to educate and train tour guides as part of an effort to
attract tourists from the Middle East.
Beside Indonesia's traditional markets, such as Japan, Australia and
Europe, the Middle East -- along with China and Russia -- has become a
major market for the Indonesian tourism industry of late.
With many educational institutes that teach Arabic, Muhammadiyah is the
perfect partner to help the ministry attract Arabic-speaking tourists,
Minister of Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik said after signing the
agreement with Muhammadiyah chairman Din Syamsuddin.
"This MoU won't just stop here, I hope by next week we will have more
concrete steps in place," said Jero in his speech, referring to a
number of action plans that will be drawn up.
"It used to be difficult for them to come to Indonesia as we had
basically closed the door," he said, referring to difficult visa
requirements and the lack of tour guides who could speak Arabic.
The ministry's secretary-general, Sapta Nirwandar, said that the
cooperation of Muhammadiyah would be a major boost to the
capacity-building effort in the tourism sector in general. "If
possible, we could establish a tourism school in collaboration with
Muhammadiyah."
Din said his organization would give its full support to the program.
"We are ready to help the government provide tourism training through
our educational institutes," he said.
Figures from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) show that, 2.9 million
tourists had visited Indonesia by the end of August, an 8.6 percent
drop from the same period last year.
Annually, the tourism sector contributes over US$5 billion in foreign
exchange income, making it the second largest source of forex in the
non-oil and gas sector after textile exports.
|
