Zubair Qureshi
Once Covid -19 is over, Pakistani tourists can plan their holidays to Indonesia’s best and the most charming scenic destinations including Bali island, Labuan Bajo, Komodo Dragon Island, ‘Thousand Islands’ and many more such places as Indonesia is blessed with blessed with internationally recognized great diverse tourism potential.
This was said by the speakers of a review discussion on ‘FAMTRIP—Wonderful Indonesia.’ The embassy of Indonesia has been organizing the familiarization trip (FAMTRIP) for the Pakistani journalists, social media influencers, tourists, tour operators to introduce the Indonesian great destinations. This year, however, due to Covid-19 pandemic the trip could not be made possible.
Charge d’Affiares of the Embassy Andi Ahmad Bastari welcoming the participants of the FAMTRIP review discussion, said Pakistan and Indonesia stood proudly together as two of the largest Muslim populated countries and were emerging economies of creative and talented people.
Andy said tourism had been one of the fastest growing industries in the world and in addition to the opportunities for recreation and cultural exchange, the tourism industry has emerged as a big source to generate employment opportunities, grow the service sector and help earn foreign exchange.
“We take pride in the world class tourist destination and Indonesia receives millions of foreign tourists from all corners of the world annually. In 2019 alone, Indonesia received over 16 million tourists from around the globe,” he said.
He urged the participants of the review discussion, majority of them had visited Indonesia as part of FAMTRIP programme, to give suggestions, feedback and guide the embassy so that the programme could be made more effective in future.
Cultural & Press Counselor of Indonesia embassy Denny Tri Basuki said the embassy in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism of Indonesia, every year organized the FAMTRIP programme by inviting Pakistan journalists and tour operators to visit Indonesia.
The programme is part of the efforts to attract Pakistani tourists attention towards the world class tourism attractions in Indonesia.
The FAMTRIP, he said to some extent, has been helpful in creating awareness in Pakistan about tourism opportunities in Indonesia, however, there is still a lot more needed to be done to bring the tourists traffic between the two countries to its true potential.
