Making the most of tourism in Indonesia to promote sustainable regional development

Patrice Ollivaud and Peter Haxton

No 1535, OECD Economics Department Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: Tourism has boomed in Indonesia in recent years and is already one of the main sources of foreign-currency earnings. Indonesia has rich and diverse natural assets, whose tourism potential remains underutilised. The government has an ambitious target of attracting 20 million tourists by 2019, up from nearly 14 million in 2017. The main destination will continue to be Bali. Using Bali as the preferred development model, the government wants to develop other destinations, particularly through infrastructure programmes to improve connectivity, which is a longstanding challenge for tourism as well as for regional development more generally. Enhancing the tourism-related skills of local populations will provide them with expanded job opportunities. This calls for reforms to vocational education and training. Moreover, recent efforts by the authorities to improve the business environment need to continue, including through helping firms embrace digitalisation. Tourism may be growing too fast in some destinations without adequately taking into account sustainability issues, both for the environment and local communities. Better planning and co-ordination at all levels of government and across relevant policy areas can facilitate more sustainable tourism development.This Working Paper relates to the 2018 OECD Economic Survey of Indonesia (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-indonesia.htm).

Keywords: digitalisation; Indonesia; infrastructure; regional development; sustainable development; tourism; vocational education and training (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 L83 Q56 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-sea and nep-tur
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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