2020 is a Big Hit for Indonesia’s Tourism: What is the Opportunity Next?
An opportunity to bring back the tourism industry in Indonesia.
The Ministry of Tourism and Creative Industry has released the data about monthly foreigners that come to Indonesia in July 2020. The numbers drop by 89.10% compared to July 2019, with Bandara Ngurah Rai and Batam as the biggest airport hit with a 90–100% drop. This number leads to a decrease in revenue from tourism sectors by almost 81 billion rupiahs, and it is expected to be more decreased in the next few months unless COVID-19 vaccines or international borders will be slowly open any time soon, which currently not the case.
The governments said that there will be a stimulus for the business owners in the tourism and creative industry sectors, but many claimed that they haven’t received direct help yet. By this, the decision has to be made when large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) transitions happen, the hotel or tourist agencies owner has to open the business for domestic tourists for the business to run.
Along with that context, this situation also leads to behavioral changes from domestic tourism and what kind of travel trends will look like in the future. We will try to categorize all of the travel aspects from the starts to ends to see how different it is from the ‘normal’ traveling that people usually have before the pandemic. By the end of each aspect, we will conclude and see whether this is an opportunity for some business to slide in and develop its opportunity to solve the problems.
The aspects will be divided into 2 parts:
- Pre-travel
- During travel
Pre-travel
Choosing a closer destination
Major consideration to travel will lie in choosing the destination, for domestic traveling, many will choose an underrated yet exquisite and not so popular place with the expectation of implementing social distancing. Choosing a location that is not so far from home also becomes one of the trends, as people understand the risk of traveling and only need a short getaway.
Every destination comes with a risk. Even though not so popular destinations are expected to be visited, there might be others that will think the same way, and lastly not so ‘socially distanced’ anymore. What we can do is always check the daily/weekly/monthly and expected visitors in the destination to carefully calculate the number of people coming in, and by this, we can be prepared enough to properly travel.
Public transportations are not an option for traveling
Quoted from detik.com, the choice of transportation will be very narrowed. Self-owned cars or motorbikes become one of the top options to be used. It is much safer, we can regularly check and clean it by ourselves, and there are no rules on how to onboard unlike trains and planes (which need a rapid test a few days before the flight).
Pay attention more on accommodations, logistics and documents
A lot, and a lot of research beyond the destination itself. With domestic traveling, check whether the city is gradually having an increased number of positive cases. It is important to know whether the city is handling the cases correctly or not, and also have a very strict implementation of the new normal for touristic places and hospitalities. For international traveling, it is equally necessary to check whether the country is open or not for your nationality, then check if the SWAB/Rapid test is necessary or if you even need 14 days of self-quarantine in the country. Those will affect your budget and how many days you’ll spend in the country.
People will tend to choose an accommodation that has a complete explanation about how the protocol changes, and what are the routines they are implementing with the staff and its rooms after being used. Putting some more effort in talking with the hotels’ representatives and making sure everything is what they’ve explained after arriving.
The usage of insurance has also become more necessary than before, both for health and travel insurance. As it is stated in the The New York Times, travel insurance will most likely cover the cancelled trips (which happens a lot in this time), and health insurance might cover some areas of hospital bills depending on the company and which type of it.
What are the opportunities?
The hustle of getting the right information is not for everyone. Whether it is a startup or travel agencies, it is necessary to have all of the information centralized in one place and become a part of the services. Gather more datas from current partners and showcase it on the website and service offerings can be valuable for future customers. For hotels or any accommodations types, exercise to put a safe and healthy environment as the priority, as it will attract the majority of the people to choose the accommodations.
For transportation providers, while it is a must to follow the safety and health protocol, ensuring the business can expand into more personalized and less people in the seats are very much needed. Partner up with another travel agency to ensure the supply of the tourists and equip the transportation with all necessary things such as masks, hand-sanitizer, and continued clean-up.
During Travel
Nature and outdoors options
Nature and the outdoors are by far the most chosen places to visit. For example, with hikers numbers decreased by 44%, there is a possibility where people can visit at the foot of a mountain. Nature and the outdoors also gives more relaxation and healing spaces, after being quarantined or working from home for the past few months.
Touchless tourism
When a tight protocol is one of the ways to limit the spread of the virus, it is much more efficient to use technology to support it. In a hands-free environment, touchless documents scanning, voice commands, sensors, are equally important and give a sense of safety. Using the Internet of Things (IoT) inside the accommodations to ease and reduce physical touch to remote controls, curtains, and other things are seen to become the future of accommodations’ services.
What are the opportunities?
For deep-tech startups, investors and governments, it is important to put stimulus in those types of tourism, so that tourism can run with more valuable aspects. Developing, prototype, research, and development to ensure technology is being widely used in terms of tourism can be a way to recover travel industries and its stakeholders even faster than what is expected.
BRIGHT Indonesia as Perfect Partner
Traveling can easily become a premier need for some groups of people. The hope for the industry sectors to be recovered is also very high as it is one of the main revenue for Indonesia and its people to survive. Help and stimulus from investors and governments are much needed for the business to run at least for domestic traveling, any policies for bank loans also can be changed depending on the situation that the tourism sectors currently face. Indeed, having the right local partner can be helpful to enter Indonesia tourism and hospitality industry.
BRIGHT Indonesia is a perfect partner for your company. BRIGHT Indonesia will assist you on the ground, including virtual assistant during the mission, logistic arrangement, and communication of every detail. It can make your company focus on developing partnership cooperation without thinking further about the hassle during the business trip.
BRIGHT Indonesia provides several services such as Market Insight Research, Business Registration and Establishment, and Business Partnership Engagement services that can help you in expanding and developing your business by identification of potential partners as well as obtain the work and stay permit in Indonesia (expatriates utilization plan (RPTKA), expatriates utilization permit (IMTA), limited stay permit (KITAS)) easier.
The domain of our strategy consulting services focuses on supporting private sector clients with the development of corporate/business unit strategies and helping public sector organizations with public policy, training and assisting our clients entering FDI source countries to gather investment for our client’s local markets.
We can also help your company registration by becoming a representative office with the rights to trade and by limited liability foreign-owned companies and help your company with a full report of market insight research.
BRIGHT Indonesia always strives to give excellent services designed to fulfill your company’s needs with experiences in assisting multiple global clients in entering Indonesia and Southeast Asia Market. These collaborations are proof of our unrivaled service.
For more information, email info@brightindonesia.net.
Written by Nabila Anbar.
