Direct Vietjet flight to boost tourism between Vietnam and Indonesia

Bali Safari Marine Park Tour

This information was released by Masriati Lita S. Pratama, Minister Counsellor for Economic Affairs, the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia, at the Tourism Networking Event last week. Accordingly, Vietjet Air will operate the route and tickets will be sold in two months. “On March 25, Vietjet’s representative will officially announce this route at the Indonesia Sales Mission and Networking Dinner. Besides, Vietjet is also planning to open routes connecting Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi with Jakarta. I hope that this will solve the biggest challenge of tourism relation between the two countries and boost the number of tourists from both sides with competitive tours,” Lita told VIR.

According to Lita, in 2018, the number of Vietnamese tourists to Indonesia was 75,632, while the number of Indonesian tourists to Vietnam was 87,941.

“These numbers are small compared to the total outbound traveler volumes of the two countries and too small compared to their population. We target to welcome 100,000 Vietnamese tourists in 2019,” Lita said.

To reach the target and make use of direct flights, in 2019, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism has promoted 10 more destinations besides Bali, the land for honeymoons, including Borobudur, the world's largest Buddhist temple in Central Java, and Toba Lake in North Sumatra, a large natural lake occupying the caldera of a supervolcano with the length of about 100 kilometres, width of 30 kilometres, and depth of 505 metres.

“We also promote all these destinations at Vietnam International Travel Mart 2019 (VITM) which will take place March 27 to 30, with attractive tours and prices,” Lita added.

As one of more than 30 representatives of travel agencies participating in the event, Pham Tien Dung, general director of Golden Tour, shared that although Indonesia was very attractive with diverse culture and landscapes, the market was higher than other destinations.

“Now we provide tours to Bali at the price of nearly VND14 million (around $600). This is the best price in Vietnam now, but it is still higher than tours to South Korea,” Dung said. He also hoped that with the direct flights, his company can provide cheaper tours to Indonesia in general and Bali in particular.

Vietnam and Indonesia are aiming to reach the bilateral trade turnover of $10 billion by 2020. The development of the two countries’ relations in tourism will partly contribute to reaching this target.