JAKARTA: Indonesia records a slight increase in its inbound tourism, welcoming 1.01 million foreign visitors in January, according to Statistics Indonesia (BPS).
BPS official Ateng Hartono said in a press conference on Monday that January’s foreign arrivals inched up 1.11% compared with the same month last year.
The figure is based on arrivals recorded at the country’s main entry points, including international airports, seaports and border crossing points.
The number of foreign nationals entering the archipelago decreased by 17.06% month-to-month, which BPS described as a “normalisation pattern” following a typical seasonal spike in December, when the number of international visitors reached 1.2 million.
The annual increase, meanwhile, showed that “Indonesia’s tourism remains within a positive and sustained growth trajectory”, the latest BPS report outlined.
Most of the foreign tourists entered Indonesia in January through Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar, Bali, and Soekarno Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, which together welcomed 712,950 visitors, 89.06% of inbound tourism.
The seaports of Batam and Tanjung Uban in Riau Islands served as the main entry points for sea transportation with 142,870 arrivals combined.
Road transportation, meanwhile, brought in 40,510 visitors, mostly from Atambua in East Nusa Tenggara and the Jayapura border crossing in Papua.
The Tourism Ministry previously reported that a total of 15.39 million foreign visitors entered the country last year, marking a 10.8% increase on 2024 and beating the government’s target of attracting 14 million to 15 million visits.
The top countries of origin in January, according to BPS data, were Malaysia, Australia and China.
While foreign visitor numbers have been increasing since 2021, the annual figure still falls short of the peak of 16.1 million visitors logged in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic disrupted travel worldwide.
Tourism Minister Widiyanti Putri Wardhana said in December that Indonesia was nevertheless becoming “increasingly attractive and competitive” for global tourists, citing a “surplus” between inbound and outbound tourism.
As of December, the ministry noted that inbound tourism continued to outpace outbound travel, resulting in a surplus of 6.2 million visitors, up from 4.94 million in the same period the previous year.
Outbound tourism in January was up 1.65% annually at 1.01 million travellers, with top destinations including Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Singapore.
In contrast with the annual increase in foreign tourists, BPS reported that domestic tourism in January dropped by 0.93% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 102.04 million travellers.
Railway passengers in January reached 48.1 million people, marking an annual increase of 10.94%, but domestic air travellers fell by 3.33% y-o-y to 4.92 million in January, while domestic sea travellers decreased 0.55% y-o-y to 2.61 million.
The Tourism Ministry registered a total of 1.2 billion domestic trips last year, beating the target of 1.08 billion and far surpassing the prepandemic level of 722 million trips recorded in 2019. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
