JAKARTA, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia's Tourism Ministry has chosen Chinese cities of Nanning, Shenzhen and Guangzhou for its upcoming tour package sales programs slated for April 16-19, an official at the ministry said.
Vincentius Jemadu, assistant deputy tourism minister for international marketing supervising Asia and the Pacific markets, said the ministry would send 10 sales program sellers to China.
They would be particularly assigned to secure the market as it has became the world's highly potential tourism market, he said.
"It means that they have to be able to convince Chinese potential tourists that Indonesian destinations were essential for them to visit. China is a very strategic market that needs to get maintained. Other countries were also aiming at this lucrative tourism market," Jemadu said.
To lure Chinese visitors, the ministry would give preference to Chinese tourists who will visit Indonesia throughout the events.
Jemadu said that China's outbound tourists have reached 130 million with total spending of 17.5 billion U.S. dollars last year.
"Not only number of the tourists, their spending was also incredibly huge. This is the opportunity that we must seize," Jemadu added.
He said that number of Chinese tourists visited Indonesia has apparently increased 35.75 percent to 1.972 million last year. Bali received most of them with 1.336 million ones.
He added that his ministry has set target to receive 3 million Chinese tourists this year from the total 17 million foreign tourist arrivals targeted in the year.
To ensure significant addition of Chinese tourist arrivals in Indonesia, the sales mission program held in Shenzhen would offer charter flights for Chinese tourists to Indonesia's western region of Batam and Bintan.
"This would be an effort to bring Chinese tourists to Indonesian destinations other than Bali," Jemadu added.