Tourism Foreign Exchange Earnings Targeted at US$2.9-5.9 Billion in 2023

The Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy targets foreign exchange earnings from the tourism sector to reach US$2.07 – US$5.95 billion in 2023. The target for foreign tourist arrivals this year is in the range of 3.4 million – 7.4 million visits.

If these targets are achieved, tourism sector foreign exchange earnings this year will grow by almost 40 percent from last year. This achievement is estimated to be equivalent to 4.1% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020, devastated Indonesia's tourism sector. Foreign tourist arrivals and foreign exchange earnings from the tourism sector fell to their lowest levels in several decades.

Foreign tourist arrivals plummeted by 74.83 percent to 4.05 million visits in the first year of the pandemic (2020). This continued into the second year of the pandemic (2021), with a 61.57 percent decrease to only 1.56 million visits. The number of foreign tourist visits in 2021 was the lowest in two decades.

The decline in foreign tourist arrivals impacted tourism sector foreign exchange revenue, as seen in the data. In 2020, tourism foreign exchange earnings plummeted by 74.84 percent to US$3.31 billion. Similarly, in 2021, they fell by 61.57% to only US$520 million.

As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided, foreign tourist arrivals began to recover in 2022. Foreign tourist arrivals more than doubled to 5.47 million visits last year.

This resulted in a more than sevenfold increase in the country's foreign exchange earnings from the tourism sector to US$4.26 billion last year.

Despite recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, the performance of the national tourism sector is still far below pre-pandemic levels.

In 2019, 16.9 million foreign tourists visited Indonesia, generating US$16.1 billion in foreign exchange earnings.