Indonesia’s travel trade urged the government to step up publicity around the country’s disaster recovery efforts and latest developments of tourist attractions amid the pandemic so that travel planners can keep up destination promotions in hopes of a quick market rebound.

Budi Tirtawisata, CEO of Panorama Group, said: “Tourism has been a big darling in the last few years. Everybody was talking about tourism. (It was considered) a low-hanging fruit, a quick win. (Now), suddenly there is no good news about tourism. He spoke at the webinar titled Facing the Impact of Covid-19 and a Glimmer of Hope for the Tourism Industry recently.

“We need a good spokesperson for the industry and having good leadership will make it easier for us in the industry to get through this. I think the leadership of the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy is very important here.”

Monas Tjahjono, managing director of Monas Tours & Travel Surabaya, said on a separate occasion that while the government provided regular updates on the number of Covid-19 cases, the world needed to know also the developments surrounding the tourist destinations and attractions.

Agreeing, Yulhendry Sulhatris, director of Synergy Ravelindo Tours & Travel Medan, said that his European tour operator partners still wanted to promote Indonesian tourism on their websites and social media despite the crisis, but updated information on national parks, temples, and other tourist sites were lacking.

He also bemoaned the dearth of promotional materials about the country that is available in English, citing the example of Wonderful Danau Toba’s Facebook page that is in Bahasa Indonesia. “Indonesia has VITOs (Visit Indonesia Tourism Officers) overseas, and they need us to feed them with information in English,” he said.

Noting that the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy (MTCE) had tweaked its slogan from Wonderful Indonesia to Thoughtful Indonesia in a bid to show Indonesia’s empathy towards the current situation, Yulhendry expressed hopes that its stance will be backed up with actions.

He opined that the Ministry needed to step up its global dissemination of accurate and timely information on the safety precautions and measures Indonesia was taking to ensure that the destination is safe to travel.