Tourism Sector to Take a Hit From Jakarta Bombs

Police putting up a poster of
Malaysian Noordin Mohammed Top
at a mall in Surabaya.
He is suspected of being the mastermind
behind the Jakarta hotel bombings.

Although calm had returned to the Mega Kuningan commercial district in South Jakarta, a week after suicide bombers attacked two luxury hotels there, normalcy had not. Bombs exploded within minutes of each other at the upscale JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels on July 17, killing nine people, including two bombers, and injuring at least 55 others. Portions of the traffic circle in front of the two hotels remained closed to the public, providing ample parking space for an assortment of police vehicles, including several bomb squad vans. Wreaths and flowers, some already wilted, lay strewn on the roadside near the hotels. The usually busy surrounding area, packed with tall office buildings, was unusually quiet. National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Nanan Soekarna said investigations at the bomb sites were almost complete and that the two hotels could reopen on Saturday. But Els Ramadhinta, the Ritz-Carlton’s director of public relations in Jakarta, said that “after they leave, we will be ready by two weeks at the latest.” Indonesian Hotels and Restaurants Association chairman Yanti Sukamdani said the bombs would push down hotel occupancy rates to 54 percent in July from 70 percent in June. “We haven’t calculated the loss in monetary terms yet,” Yanti said. “We hope that in December the industry would have recovered, ” she said. Ben Sukma, president of the Indonesian Travel Agencies Association (Asita), estimated that Indonesia’s tourism sector may need about six months to recover from the impact of the attacks. “Our representative offices abroad said foreign tourists may delay their departures to Indonesia by four to eight weeks, waiting to see the situation first,” Ben said. He added that the bomb attacks, the first in four years, would push down the number of foreign tourist arrivals at least until Aug. 31. Jakarta was expected to see the biggest drop, between 20 and 30 percent, or about 7,000 fewer arrivals, while an international cruise ship with 1,800 tourists had already canceled its planned stop on the resort island of Bali, he said. “Based on our experience, our tourism sector will need about six months for recovery,” Ben said, adding that he expected the country’s foreign tourists arrivals for this year to fall short of the 6.3 million target. “By June, we already had about 3.5 million tourists. After last week’s bomb attacks, I don’t think we can get another 2.8 million in the remaining six months,” he said. “If there is another bomb incident, I can say that we will be finished.” Only the country’s airlines appeared to see no immediate significant fallout, with Tengku Burhanuddin, the secretary general of the Indonesia National Air Carriers Association, saying that “the impact only appeared in the first two or three days after the incident.”

Author: The Jakarta Globe