Tourist come to indonesia

A total of 134,909 South Korean tourists visited the resort island of Bali in 2008, up by 0.21 percent compared to the 134,622 tourists in the previous year. Although the rise is not as large as with Australian or Japanese tourists, South Korean tourists still remain the third largest group coming to Bali.

The number of South Korean tourists to Bali in 2008 made up 6.77 percent of the 1.99 million tourists that visited the island last year. Many of the South Korean tourists visit Bali as a result of the cooperation between the Bali administration and South Korea in the fields of culture, tourism and agriculture.

The struggling tourism industry in Bali has not discouraged the island's newest high school graduates from enrolling in vocational schools of tourism. The Kertayasa vocational school of tourism in Singakerta, Ubud, Gianyar regency, has received applications from 230 new graduates. The applicants come not only from Gianyar, but also from Badung, Bangli, Klungkung and Karangasem. The school's head, A.A. Gede Sugiantara, said the number of applicants had increased from last year. He plans to add one more class to the current four. Each class will have 48 students. An increase like this happened two years ago.

The ongoing global financial crisis may see some 20 percent of 4.41 million people working in the Indonesian tourism industry lose their jobs. 

"We haven't calculated the exact figure, but no more than 20 percent of the total tourism workers will be affected," Harry Waluyo, director of the Culture and Tourism Ministry's Data and Network Center, said on the sidelines of the International Conference on Tourism Statistics, which opened Monday.  He added workers directly employed in tourism establishments would face a bigger possibility of losing their jobs than those in tourism-related industries. Tourism-related industries will be able to find alternative markets for their products, while tourism establishments, such as hotels, restaurants and tour operators, will certainly be hard-pressed once visitor numbers drop significantly. Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com