Indonesia is the most populous country of the word which has a great capacity for tourism and also is being targeted as a tourist destination for global tourists.
Indonesia and Iran do some Joint actions in attracting tourists and by considering common items in culture, history, and religion, cooperation of these countries could lead to significant achievements.
Octavino Alimudin, Ambassador of Indonesia emphasized on the interest of his country to cooperate with Iran. During his visit to the 13th International Tourism Exhibition and the 33rd National Handicrafts Exhibition, he interviewed with CHTN in the public relation department:
Let’s began the interview with the Indonesia tourism slogan, wonderful Indonesia, what is behind that?
There are two facts, first the diverse climate of our country, we have Rice fields, palm, beach and at the same time highland, second is the diverse culture and traditions of people in each region.
To compare the two country which one has more tourist income?
We have a problem with this issue, because there is not any direct flight between Iran to Indonesia, our passengers, who want to travel to Iran, first go to our Neighbors, considering that we cant have specific data about our tourist to Iran.
We only have statistic of the Iranian tourists who go to Indonesia, last year we issued about 8000 visa for them, for different purposes, business, touristic and also education.
But most of Indonesian tourists go to Iran for the sake of Halal tourism. They like Ashora and arbaeen ceremony, and also new year eve in Iran.
There are also many students who are educating in Iran and their family also visit them.
How do you see the future of tourism cooperation between the two countries?
Tourism always connects countries, apart from political issues. We faced Natural disasters many times, but after a while it recovered, I can say it will be same for regional problems, people will forget and visit Iran for its cultural heritage.
Most tourist go to Iran because of Persian carpet and continue that as long as it is valuable.
It depends on how you promote your tourism slogan, majestic Iran, and how you promote Persian Gulf and the other cities.
Tourists want to feel safe and it make them to stay longer. Another problem is International credit cards, but they still travel to Iran.
What is the role of this kind of exhibitions from your point of view?
We attend these exhibitions for the last 4 years, we could contact different Domestic and foreign travel agencies and also managers of some airlines.