Jakarta (TAN): The three Gili islands, situated off the northwest coast of Lombok in Indonesia, have been struggling to bring back tourists since the devastating string of earthquakes in August, 2018, which did major damage on both Lombok and the Gilis.
Rebuilding of buildings on Gili Trawangan, the biggest of the three islands and party central before the quake struck, is still going on, The Jakarta Post reported, adding that hotels and cafes on the island were largely empty.
The Gili islands have no motorised transport. Transportation includes horse-drawn carriages and bicycles.
Visitor numbers to Lombok plunged by as much as 66 per cent following the earthquake, reveal tourism ministry figures. The decrease in numbers is primarily of domestic tourists.
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“The foreign tourists who come here say they are not afraid of earthquakes as much as they are of terrorists, but we assume domestic tourists are still frightened by the disaster,” Emanuel Prasodjo, a hotel manager in Gili Trawangan, told The Jakarta Post.
Around half of the hotels and restaurants on Gili Trawangan resumed normal operations by February.
Indonesia had aimed to attract 17 million tourists last year, but failed to achieve the target. It ended up welcoming 15.81 million foreign visitors. The tourism ministry blames the natural disasters for this.
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At a news conference, tourism ministry official Nia Niscaya said the Lombok earthquake, the earthquake and tsunami in Central Sulawesi in September and the Lion Air crash in October, had greatly affected Indonesia’s tourist numbers in 2018. Additionally, Indonesia saw the eruptions of Mount Anak Krakatau in the Sunda Strait, Mount Agung in Bali and the Banten tsunami the same year.
“We had a target to attract 17 million international tourists last year but only achieved 15.8 million,” Nia said. “This year, however, we believe we can attract 20 million tourists, as hard as that may be to reach.”
“People in neighbouring countries have geographical and cultural proximity to us, so it is far easier for us to reach out to them and it is cheaper for them to visit our destinations,” Nia added.
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Indonesia, however, experienced a 5.22 per cent rise in the number of tourists in the first month of 2019 as compared to the corresponding period in 2018, China’s official news agency Xinhua said.
Citing the archipelago country’s national statistics bureau figures, the report attributed the rise in numbers to an increase in visitors to the archipelago nation from China. A whopping 1.16 million people visited Indonesia in January.
