Foreign Tourists Visits Down 21 Percent

Pekanbaru - Number of foreign tourists (Wisman) who visited the Riau Province in October 2009 reached 23,441 people. That number is down 21 percent when compared to the number of foreign tourists in the same month in 2008 who reached the figure of 37,000 tourists.

This figure is a heavy blow to the condition of Riau tourists. But on the other hand, the number of local tourists if it actually increased over the previous year. Data in October 2008 reached 2.1 million increase in 2009 was the year to 2.3 million people.

''This year is the number of foreign tourists dropped compared to last year. The reason is the lack of promotion of tourism treasures in Riau,''said Chief of Riau Tourism Board (RTB), Sulaiman told Fadlah Post Pekanbaru, Wednesday (16/12) as a speaker at the Campus School of Tourism (Stipar) Riau.

Fadlah explained, that the true potential of local tourists and this is good enough that in fact escaped the attention of the government. The government is more likely to pursue the amount or quantity to increase foreign tourists than focusing on the management of local tourists. While pursuing foreign tourists, the government is quite limited in terms of promotion abroad.

Our weakness''sometimes we want to pursue the quantity of foreign tourists to the exclusion of local tourists. We'll see local tourists are even more prospective than foreign tourists,''said Fadlah.

The solution, said Fadlah, the government must do a lot of promotion of tourist spots that are for sale. Along with that, the government also must continue to make improvements both in infrastructure and other supporting factors such as the entry, airports, ports and others.

2010''next year we will be heavily promoting the 2009 year 72 iven this 311 iven. This promotion can hopefully boost the tourism world Riau,''said Fadlah.

While Chairman Stipar Riau, Drs MM Riyono Trisoko Cede said that a half-day seminar aims to foster kepekanaan relevant stakeholders in the development of regional tourism. ''We hope that starting from this seminar dapatmenjadi corrections and followed-up,''said Riyono