Boom time again as Indonesia records highest foreign tourist arrivals since pandemic era

JAKARTA, July 1 (Bernama-ANTARA) — Foreign tourist arrivals to Indonesia reached 5.2 million from January to May 2024, the highest recorded figure since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, reported ANTARA news agency quoting Statistics Indonesia.

“The total number of foreign tourist arrivals in the first five months of 2024 is the highest in the last four years, since 2020,” Acting Chief Secretary of BPS Imam Machdi told a press conference in Jakarta on Monday.

The number of foreign tourist arrivals in the country during the January-May 2020 period only reached 2.9 million. The figure declined to only 604,000 in the same period in 2021.

The number of foreign tourist arrivals then rose to 997,000 in 2022 and thereafter reached 4.2 million arrivals in the January to May 2023 period.

In May 2024 alone, the number of foreign tourist arrivals in Indonesia stood at 1,145,499, an increase of 7.36 per cent month over month and a climb of 20.11 per cent year over year.

Tourists from the neighbouring country Malaysia dominated the number of travellers visiting Indonesia, with a share of 17 per cent of the total foreign tourists recorded in May 2024, followed by tourists from Australia (12 per cent), Singapore (9.7 per cent) and China (8.6 per cent).

“Tourist arrivals from Malaysia increased by 17.24 per cent on a monthly basis, while on an annual basis, they increased by 18.26 per cent,” Machdi remarked.

As many as 544,000 tourists entered Indonesia through I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport, Bali, dominated by tourists from Australia.

The BPS reported that in May 2024, the average length of stay of foreign tourists, including foreign travellers crossing borders, in Indonesia stood at 7.51 nights. – Bernama-ANTARA