I recently returned from a 10-day familiarisation tour of Indonesia. As I travelled from the capital city, Jakarta, to Bandung, Yogyakarta and on Bali, I gasped many times out of surprise and made notes of the lessons for Kenya on matters tourism.
Indonesia’s tourism sector is growing by leaps and bounds. In 2017, the country was ranked 20th overall in the global tourist industry, ninth-fastest-growing tourist sector in the world and fastest-growing in Southeast Asia.
And my interactions with office holders made me understand that this is not happenchance but a concerted effort to drive the industry.
For a long time, most quarters identified Indonesia with Bali as its best tourist destination, just as most people identify Kenya with the safari. But the Indonesian government is updating the country’s profile as a marquee tourist destination outside Bali.
So far, 10 new destinations have been rolled out around the country and more people jetting in are visiting the other islands. Indonesia has 17,000 islands but 6,000 are inhabitable.
The journey to this revolution may have started many years ago but it is in 2015 that notable changes were made. First, the ministry of Tourism came up with a target of 20 million tourists by 2019. Then, the number hovered over nine million.
To an outsider, this might have been concluded as being overambitious and unrealistic. But as the country now edges closer to achieving that target and diversifying its sources of revenue, the efforts and strategies deployed are take-home lessons.
With clear benchmarks put into place, first, the ministry was overhauled. Before 2015, promotion of tourism and development were under the umbrella of the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy.
In the new structure, the latter section was spun off, allowing the ministry to promote the country more aggressively, target more tourist destinations outside Bali and enact regulatory reforms to attract investments. And, of course, it received a significant budget increase.
In the same year, the government relaxed visa entry requirements. Kenya is among the 169 countries whose citizens get visas on arrival.
While this was happening, a flurry of activity started on the ground. There is construction of roads, airports and seaports.
Now, Indonesia has a subway and an international airport in Yogyakarta expected to start operating in March. Upon completion, the airport will host 20 million visitors yearly, up from eight million.
Interestingly, no heritage site is taken for granted and, further, each of the places we visited had unique offerings.
While Jakarta offered tens of shopping malls, Bandung, which is accessible by train from the capital, welcomed visitors to the rich Javanese culture and traditional musical performances. Borobudur, a Buddhist temple in Central Java, attracts about 2,000 tourists everyday.
I have since not stopped thinking about Kenya and how sound policy-making and effective governance could spur the tourism sector, its second-largest foreign exchange earner after agriculture.
A few weeks ago, a photo of a city tour bus with “Nairobi city seeing bus” inscribed on it emerged on social media. People made all sorts of jokes about it, the most notable being, “What is there to see in Nairobi City? Traffic jam?”
But it depicted a ministry on siesta. Besides the visits to the national parks and giraffe centre, there is a lot to showcase in Nairobi. I figure that most domestic and foreign tourists have not been to the KICC helipad, the National Archives or Kenya National Theatre.
I refrain to talk about Uhuru Park, a site that a great portion of the middle class refuses to associate with.
Figures from the Kenya Tourism Board website show that 73.9 per cent of international tourists come to Kenya on holiday. I presume that they are driven to Maasai Mara or down to the Coast.
They are not told about Karura Forest, the crying mountain in Kakamega or Thompson Falls in Nyahururu. Hell’s Gate awaits, hoping that people have watched the Lion King or bothered to ask for recommendations on the places to visit while in Kenya.
Kenya has much to offer to the world yet it keeps shying away from showcasing its beauty. Or, maybe, we feel that the visitors have an obligation to visit us, we are a king that needs to be revered or our country is such a wonder that we do not have to say, “Hello world, we are here.”
To become sustainable, we have to wean ourselves of the safaris and the coastal beaches and look into what each county can offer.
We should then revitalise our marketing efforts and woo the 13.3 per cent visitors who come to Kenya on business, the 6.7 per cent who visit friends and families and the millions of Kenyans who need awareness on domestic tourism.
Mutuma Mathiu’s column will resume next week
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