Taking its longstanding partnership with South Asia’s biggest travel expo SATTE to a new high, Indonesia Tourism has signed up as the Premium Partner Country for the high-profile SATTE 2020. Indonesia was one of the partner countries at SATTE 2019. The tourism board has been participating at the region’s biggest travel mart year after year to further its market development plan on the Indian sub-continent and has reaped big results. SATTE 2020 is scheduled to take place in a couple of weeks, from January 8-10.
Indonesia’s tourism stake in the Indian market has witnessed tremendous uptick in the last few years. At the end of 2017 India emerged as Indonesia’s sixth largest tourism source market replacing South Korea. Indonesia recorded a robust over 43% growth in 2016, 29% in 2017 and a strong 20% in 2018 in tourist arrivals from India. Indian arrivals have grown from just over 262,000 in 2015 to almost 600,000 in 2018 and look set to surpass its target of 630,000 for the year 2019.
Commenting on the Indonesia’s participation at SATTE 2020 as the Premium Partner Country of the event, Sanjay Sondhi, VITO – India, New Delhi, said that the tourism board has been participating at SATTE from the past ten years and has increased its presence from a small booth 10 years ago to now almost 300 square meters now, making Indonesia one of the biggest pavilions at SATTE 2020.
“Over the years, we have seen some very good response not just from the buyers coming from across India but also from sellers who have been coming from Indonesia. They have been very happy with the meetings and that’s why there is increase in the size of the booth and the number of sellers coming from Indonesia. Quality meetings and suppliers’ ability to generate more interest in their products and destinations, the visibility has been very high for us at SATTE,” he said.
Commenting on the association, Pallavi Mehra, Group Director of Informa Markets in India, said, “We are delighted to welcome Indonesia as the Premium Partner Country at SATTE 2020. Indonesia has been one of our longstanding destination-partner over the years. As South Asia’s travel and tourism fraternity gather to showcase, buy, network and learn at the year’s most anticipated event of the region SATTE in a few weeks, Indonesia Tourism as the event’s Premium Partner Country will be at the center of attention of over 35,000 trade visitors, buyers from across India and the South Asia region as well as international buyers from different parts of the globe.”
“SATTE being the biggest international travel show in this part of the world has provides the perfect platform to launch or showcase a destination to buyers from across India and the South Asia region. Indonesia’s decision to be the Premium Partner country for SATTE 2020 is a testimony to that. We are confident the show will provide tremendous partnership opportunities to Indonesian suppliers with buyers from the region,” Mehra further added.
Popular for the resort island of Bali, Indonesia is keen to showcase its diversity of products and destinations at SATTE 2020 to attract Indian visitors to places beyond Bali as well.
“At SATTE this year, our message would be priority destinations and the segments that we want to focus on. Bali is very strong. It’s a brand. But now we will also showcase new destinations like Lake Toba in Medan, Komodo Island, Labuan Bajo, among others. We are also looking at Lombok and also Borobudur (A 9th century world’s largest Buddhist temple and a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and Prambanan (Another 9th century UNESCO World Heritage Site and Indonesia’s largest Hindu temple dedicated to Trimurti – Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) in Yogyakarta because of cultural connect,” Sondhi said.
He further informed that the tourist islands of Bintan and Batam will also be in the spotlight as the area is in close proximity to Singapore.
In the last three years (2016-2018), India’s outbound growth to Indonesia has been almost 3.5 times more vis-à-vis India’s overall growth in outbound travel. Indonesia’s has registered 43%, 29% and 20% growth in visitor arrivals from India in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively as against the overall outbound travel growth from India that has been recorded at 7.3, 9.5 and an estimated 9.8% (provisional) for the three years.
