Charter flights, halal tourism: how Indonesia is wooing Chinese tourists from Thailand’s grasp

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From 2 million Chinese visitors this year, to five times as many in 2019, Indonesia’s plans to cash in on the Chinese tourism dollar are nothing if not ambitious. But for arrival figures to soar, it must first address a lack of flights

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A woman visits the Buddhist temple of Borobudur. Photo: Alamy

Resty Woro Yuniar

Published: 11:45am, 10 Sep 2017Updated: 11:53am, 10 Sep 2017

Sunny Huang is unimpressed with how long it took to fly from her hometown Chongqing to Jakarta. In January, the teacher, 22, took a red-eye flight from the Chinese city to Kuala Lumpur, where she stopped for eight hours before taking a two-hour connecting flight to Indonesia’s capital. She travelled for fifteen hours in total.

“It was tiring,” said Huang. “I slept at [Kuala Lumpur] airport because I took off from Chongqing at 11pm.”

Huang had not had the option of taking a direct flight – the nearest city offering a non-stop service to Jakarta was Guangzhou, 1,300km away.

Experts say experiences such as Huang’s illustrate a lack of air connectivity between many Chinese cities and Indonesia that could impede the Southeast Asian nation’s effort to attract 10 million Chinese tourists a year by 2019. In a bid to address the problem, Indonesia’s tourism ministry is offering incentives to national airlines to expand their services beyond China’s biggest cities to places such as Xian, Kunming, and Guilin.

A beach at Anano island in the Wakatobi district of Indonesia. Photo: AFP

“We are offering cash subsidies or joint promotions to push airlines to open charter flights in more Chinese cities,” said Vinsensius Jemadu, deputy assistant for Asia-Pacific tourism promotion at Indonesia’s tourism ministry. “Almost all major Indonesian airlines now operate air charters [in China].”