insidesumatera.com | tourism & lifestyle magazine

Not long ago, the team of Inside Sumatera asked me to write something for this month’s edition–and without even thinking about it, I directly agreed upon it. This is my first article, so I do apologize if this is no Pulitzer price material. It is June, and we are now in the 6th month of the Indonesian tourism campaign, Visit Indonesia 2008–celebrating 100 years of national awakening. But is it really awakening or a restraint? Let me share two funny yet irritating short stories with you. Last March, some of my family arrived from Canada and Holland to Indonesia, they had this big plan to see Indonesia. The Dutch side frequently drops by; however the Canadians, well it was their first trip. Four weeks before arrival, the email traffic started to rapidly increase from weekly to daily till the end several times a day. During the emails, I started to notice that they absolutely had no clue about Indonesia, especially when they asked me if they should bring along a lot of aspirins and coloring books as they were rather difficult to obtain them in Indonesia or so they were informed. Hearing that, I made a joke to bring crayons along as my son loves coloring but we hardly can get them here. When they arrived in Jakarta, and they saw some of the malls, they were stunned and the only comment was that they were sooooo wrong. Not long ago, I had a group of visitors from Holland; they were planning to stay in North Sumatera for a week or two before heading back home. To my greatest astonishment, they arrived in Medan totally unknowing what to expect. They had planned to take the public bus to see the tourist sites in North Sumatera, as they heard it costs only €2 to Danau Toba. After hearing what these guests wanted to see and to do, I asked my guest relations to join me to assist them as much as possible. We provided them with all tourism maps books and explained where and how to make any bookings, and if they needed to make any further travel arrangements that we would be happy to assist. What is happening with the marketing and public relations of Indonesia? Where is it? And why after 6 months of promoting celebrating 100 years of national awakening, we are still fast a sleep in promoting the country. In my own hotel, the only information that we can provide is the information of our own personal knowledge and experience as there are no flyers or brochures available or being supplied in sufficient amounts to promote the tourism here in North Sumatera. Even something as simple as a city map is being printed by the hotel itself. Tourism in Medan and even North Sumatera is all beautiful on paper, however the hard reality is that there is no real promotion done for North Sumatera. Like my Dutch guests and my family from Canada, both come to this country without any sufficient information of what to expect. Indonesia can learn from her neighbors such as Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, beside we are so good in copying, so I keep questioning why they didn’t. I hope that for the next program, there will be some better harmonization/synchronization that all infrastructure and marketing is done properly and on time. Furthermore that both policy makers and executioners, such as hotels, airlines, travel agents and tour operators all speak the same language. An urgent plea to the government: not to only promote Java and Bali but all of Indonesia, and maybe subsidizing airlines to lower their tickets. How? Maybe by waving or lowering some taxes to boost domestic routes to ensure that local held programs, such as the Danau Toba festival. It still will get the maximum possible coverage and attendance, especially when it is held before the school holidays in Indonesia and abroad. Every story needs a happy ending, a Cinderella ending. Well this is mine; last week, the Dutch family sent me an email saying thank you for the information and making their journey more enjoyable. In addition, they sent some pictures of their kids surfing in Nias and them with the orang utans. My family from Canada now plans to retire here. And my son never got his crayons…