REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BATAM -- Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said the number of people looking for Indonesian tourism destinations in the cyber world using the Google browser on the Internet is still small.

"In the Asia-Pacific region, there are about 300 million people browsing the internet to look for tourism destinations. But only about 80 thousands of them seek Indonesian tourism destinations," the minister said here on Sunday.

The number of people seeking Indonesian destinations on the Internet is only about one percent. "The number of those seeking Malaysian destinations is higher," the minister added.

Therefore, the digital media is becoming a main target for the Ministry of Tourism to promote Indonesian tourism, namely through the E-Tourism concept.

He said the E-Tourism is a new concept his ministry is continuing to echo as one of the means of realizing tourism digital market promotion and development.

This is expected to have double impact so that the Indonesian target to achieve 20 million foreign tourist arrivals could be reached in 2019.

The digital tourism promotion system is one of the reliable promotion means of Arief Yahya to increase foreign tourist arrivals in Indonesia.

He said that 60 percent of foreign tourists visited Indonesia for culture visit and 30 percent others visited Indonesia because they are interested in Indonesian natural beauty.

Indonesia in 2014 only recorded 9,435,411 foreign tourist arrivals or up 7.2 percent from 8,802,129 in 2013.

With the figures, according to the minister, Indonesia's tourism industry has been sustainable because it has continued to increase, surpassing the world's growth of 4.7 percent.

"But that's is not yet enough," he added. This is not yet competitive enough to meet the target of 20 million arrivals in 2019.

The government still has to prepare human resources quality to achieve its 2019 tourism target.

So, the government is preparing a strategy that should be carried out such as improving the tourism infrastructure, ICT (Information, communication and technology) infrastructure, cleanliness, hygiene, and easy access facilities to the tourism destinations.

Improvement of the infrastructure is expected to drive up Indonesia's tourism competitiveness in the global level.

The competitiveness of Indonesia is currently ranked 70 on the world's list. With the infrastructure improvement it is expected to increase to the 30th rank on the list.

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