TripZilla
The fourth annual Bali and Beyond Travel Fair, Indonesia’s largest international travel fair, concluded last Saturday, June 10, 2017. The Minister of Tourism of Indonesia, Arief Yahya, arrived at the venue to do a quick inspection around the travel expo area to visit and interact with the participating sellers before continuing to the closing press conference.
The press conference was also attended by I Ketut Ardana – Chairman of Bali & Beyond Travel Fair, I Made Badra – Head of Tourism Office for Badung Regency, I. G. N. Rai Suryawijaya – Chairman of BPPD Badung, Adit Pande – Chairman of Ubud Hotels Association, Abdulbar M. Mansoer as President Director Representing Indonesia Tourism Development Corporation, Indah Trimafo Yuda – Chairman of PUTRI or Recreational Park Association of Indonesia, and Perry Marcus – Chairman of Indonesia Hotel and Restaurant Association.
The minister took the opportunity to congratulate the committee for the successful event, “I hope there are more sellers from domestic and overseas in the next BBTF. This event is a golden opportunity for every province in Indonesia to promote and sell the tourism destinations in their area, because not only BBTF is held within the country, it is also cost efficient,” addressed Mr. Yahya during the press conference. He also added, “We should make BBTF as a market place by inviting more sellers from overseas.”
Bali is still at the top of tourism point of interest in the travel expo. However respective buyers were also showing great interest in destinations beyond Bali, such as Toraja, Flores and Palembang. South Sumatera, also the co-host of BBTF 2017, designed a unique booth with huge ship construction attracting the attention of many and intrigued the buyers to visit the booth to gather deeper knowledge about the province.
“Business negotiation went very well even though only 196 buyers came to participate out of 264 registered buyers that we received. The buyers who didn’t attend are mostly from Middle East; this is probably due to the Ramadan. This year’s BBTF we hosted 188 sellers from 19 provinces,” Ketut Ardana explained.
Responding the hope addressed by the Minister, Mr. Ardana stated, “The committee is confident that we can make the forthcoming BBTF as a market place. And at the time being, we are consolidating the position of BBTF in Indonesia.” The event concluded with 5.6 trillion rupiah potential transaction.
Meanwhile, Adit Pande – The Chairman Ubud Hotel Association shared his optimistic views on the event, “This was our first time as an organization to participate in BBTF. However, we are sure that a lot more improvements will be seen in the next BBTF. The majority of the market for Ubud is European & Australian, but we are also keen to seek the opportunity to expand to more markets such as Middle East, Rusia, China and India. I believe more hotels should participate in the next BBTF.”
