REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Ministry of Tourism is exploring the Taiwan tourism market and will attract at least 250,000 tourists until the end of this year.

Deputy Foreign Tourism Marketing of the Tourism Ministry I Gde Pitana here Tuesday said Taiwan is a potential market and relatively stable.

"Taiwan is a mature market and the number of tourists coming to Indonesia is relatively stable," Pitana said.

This fact shows that Taiwan's economy is quite stable with a high number of the medium-class community.

According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), in 2013 the number of outbound Taiwan tourists reached 11,053 million.

Last year the number of Taiwanese tourists visiting Indonesia was 201,225 or increase by 17.95 percent from the previous year.

The Ministry continues to promote Indonesian tourism, one of them by holding Taiwan Sales Mission 2015 which will be held on August 26 in Taipei, and August 27 in Taichung.

This program aims to gather the Indonesian tourism industry with the tourism industry of Taiwan.

Assistant Deputy for Asia Pacific Market Development, Vincent Jemadu, said the Sales Mission Taiwan 2015 is aimed to increase the number of Taiwanese tourists visiting to preferred destinations in Indonesia.

"The Taiwanese tourists' characteristics is almost the same as the Chinese, they like island tour. The main preference is Bali, but we hope that in addition to Bali they also like to visit other destinations," he said.

The ministry facilitates business to business meeting to bring together the Indonesian tourism industry with the Taiwanese tourism industry that is interested in buying tourism packages to Indonesia.

The tour packages offered including Batam and Bintan (Riau Islands), Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Semarang (Central Java), Lombok (West Nusa Tenggara), Bandung (West Bandung) and East Java.

Another strategy to increase the number of Taiwanese tourist visits is through visa-free policy.

"Next year the government will issue visa-free policy for 30 countries. Taiwan is one of the countries proposed for the policy," Jemadu said.

The direct flight of Taiwan - Jakarta served by Eva Air, China Airlines and Air Asia is expected to boost Taiwanese tourist visits to Indonesia.

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