Awakening the giant of tourism

Handi Kurniawan
sectoral view: tourism
Head of the Sinarmas Leadership Academy and author of “Go Global” and “Global Career.”
He can be reached at [email protected]
International and local tourists
at the temple Borobudur,
Central Java.
“O
h nooo!!” – that was my
initial reaction when
the Thamrin terrorism
incident happened on January 14.
Together with some colleagues, I was
able to watch the bombs explode
and the shootout between police and
terrorists from a distance on the upper
floor of our offices.
I felt sorry for the innocent victims
of these irresponsible people, and at that
point I wondered why Indonesia over
and over again has to work extra hard to
regain the trust of investors and tourists.
Fortunately we can be very proud
that the police acted qucikly and all the
terrorists could be defeated within a
few hours. Netizens quickly responded
in ways that later went viral on
social media. A Twitter hashtag
#KamiTidakTakut (we are not afraid)
68 | GlobeAsia March 2016
also went viral, which served to show
that if the terrorists’ main purpose was
to create fear, it did not work. They
messed with the wrong people.
If there’s one person who had
major concerns about the incident’s
impact on tourism it must have been
Arief Yahya, Indonesia’s Minister of
Tourism. But only a few hours after
the police announced that all the
terrorists involved in the Jakarta
terror attack had been “cleared,” Arief
informed the press that after checking
with airlines and hotels, especially
those in the immediate vicinity of the
attacks, all had reported that there had
been no panic cancelations or checkouts. Nor were there cancelations
of forward bookings, thus ensuring
minimum impact on the flow of
tourists to Indonesia.
I talked to him in the last week
of January over an afternoon coffee
during a meeting at the Hotel
Indonesia Kempinski, less than a
kilometer away from the scene of
the attack. He had chosen a hotel in
Central Jakarta for the meeting as a
reaffirmation of #KamiTidakTakut and
to demonstrate that everything was
back to normal. In part, this was the
result of crisis management steps that
the government had followed.
The meeting at the hotel was to
discuss the theme “Accelerating the
Indonesia Tourism Industry to Achieve
12 million International Tourists &
260 million trips of Domestic Tourists
in 2016.” That’s an ambitious but
achievable target: it’s the first doubledigit target ever set for international
visitors to Indonesia.
BOY T HARJANTO/JG PHOTO
Awakening the giant of tourism
“Pak Arief, is there any impact on
tourism after the Jakarta incident?”
I asked him. “It could happen
anywhere. It happened in Australia,
Thailand, Paris and it also happened
in Jakarta. Most importantly, we were
able to restore and recover rapidly,”
he replied. “How did we do that?” I
continued to probe. “We quickly acted
in emergency mode and formed a
crisis center.”
After the crisis team made
its assessment of the impact and
acknowledged that there had been a
terrorist attack at the police post in
Jl. Thamrin, the Minister of Tourism
announced how the situation would
be handled. The police were already
working in the field to counter the
attack and rounded up a large number
of suspects alleged to have knowledge
of the attack.
On the tourism front, the
authorities immediately suspended all
advertising activities. They had been
mounting a “Wonderful Indonesia”
campaign all over the world and the
crisis team monitored the media for
seven days after the attack, in line with
international standards on reaction to
such an incident.
All the hotels close to the terror
attack site and within a few kilometers
of the site were checked: the Sari Pan
Pacific, Pullman, Mandarin Oriental,
Hyatt, Hotel Indonesia Kempinski,
Grand Sahid Jaya, Ibis Tamarin, Fave
Hotel, Art Hotel, Akmani Hotel, Oria
Hotel, Hotel Cemara, Hotel Kasenda,
Morrisey Hotel and Amaris Hotel.
“They all said they were reassured
that the incident at Jl. Thamrin had
been concluded and had not affected
(tourist arrivals),” said Minister Yahya.
The team also checked airlines and
travel agents. At 7 pm, the minister
confidently announced that there
had been no significant impact on
tourism and at the same time lifted the
suspension of the advertising campaign.
“Our fast response received much
positive feedback and was highly
appreciated by lots of parties,” he told
me. “It was our obligation to assure
the industry and community that
everything was back to normal.”
Three-stage process
The ministry moved to the second
phase of its crisis recovery, which it
calls the rehabilitation phase. “We
observed how car free-day (Jakarta’s
Sunday-without-cars in Jl. Thamrin
and Jl. Sudirman) was going for
two weeks after the incident and
everything seemed to have returned to
normal. Indeed, it was more crowded
than normal. And when the traffic
jams returned, that meant Jakarta was
normal,” joked the minister.
The next step was the
normalization phase. President Joko
Widodo had already set that going
within hours of the incident when
he arrived at the scene of the attack,
having cut short a working visit to
Cirebon in West Java. He urged the
Indonesian people to remain calm,
but to stay on alert and stay united.
He also visited the Pullman Hotel that
afternoon to signal to the domestic
and international community that
everything was safe.
As for the meeting on whose
sidelines we were having coffee, the
minister admitted that it wasn’t his
first choice of venue. “I deliberately
chose a hotel in the heart of Jakarta for
our tourism conference. Actually we
wanted a venue even closer to the site
of the incident, but all the hotels were
fully booked!” he laughed.
“I also recommended to our
neighboring countries that they
shouldn’t over-react and apply travel
bans. We can never expect such
incidents to happen, so when similar
cases occur in other countries, we
should empathize instead of punishing
them by applying travel bans.”
This remarkable story
demonstrates the country’s agility in
responding to a serious emergency
and the constructive attitudes our
tourism officials adopted. I believe we
can all learn from this example.
Unlocking potential
In a column on tourism in GlobeAsia
in May 2012 entitled “Boosting tourism
in Indonesia,” I expressed my concern
about Indonesia’s competitiveness
compared to neighboring countries
such as Singapore and Malaysia and
how very far we were from the ideal
even within ASEAN. At that time it
seemed we were unable to unlock our
true tourism potential. Now we appear
to be going in the right direction.
Thanks to the commitment of
President Widodo’s administration,
tourism has become one of the nation’s
top five priorities after infrastructure,
maritime affairs, energy, and food
security. There are two explicit
goals pertaining to tourism in 2016:
Ensuring the development of 10
new tourist destinations and making
sure of integration between trade,
investment and tourism.
March 2016 GlobeAsia | 69