The Ministry of Culture and Tourism in collaboration with the largest low-fare airline operator in Asia AirAsia put an effort to increase number of visiting foreign tourists by placing banner with Visit Indonesia Year 2008 logo on the aircraft body.

“We believe that the promotion is quite prospective in increasing number of visiting foreign tourist especially from South-Asian countries”, said Sapta Nirwandar, the ministry’s directorate general of marketing, after placing the banner on an AirAsia’s aircraft at Jakarta International Airport Soekarno-Hatta. Sapta added that the ministry has invited all airliner to parrticipate, however so far AirAsia has been the only one to positively responded after the country’s flag carrier Garuda Indonesia. “With a frequency of 225 flights per day and its expansion plan to fly Australian routes, AirAsia’s involvement will surely become potential prospect”, he continued.

Sapta was quite optimistic that banner placement on airliner with quite a high flight frequency will allow many to see the banner and become aware of the tourism campaign. The targeted seven millions visitors in 2008 will surely be achieved.

Sapta believed that significant increase in the number of visiting tourists so far was a result of successful targeted marketing campaign. As an example he pointed to banner placement on body of 50 buses operating in Beijing to reach Chinese market, which immediately yielded in 168,000 visiting Chinese tourists between January and May 2008, a significant increase compared to 57,301 within the same period of previous year.

The ministry even went into niche market, such as reunion of Hsu family, a Chinese clan. On September, every member of Hsu family from around the world will gather in Jakarta. A promotion model which will surely be intensified even more in the future.

On the other hand the President Director of AirAsia Indonesia, Darmadi, explains that the synergy will also benefit the airline in increasing cross-border traffic. Whilst part of its passengers were traveling in business purposes, number of tourists was expected to increase accordingly, in response to Visit Indonesian Year 2008 marketing campaign it endorsed.

To answer the question why the banner placement has only been implemented after a half year of Visit Indonesia Year 2008, Darmadi points to technical reason. To keep financial productivity all AirAsia’s aircrafts were in tight operation schedule whilst banner placement requires five hours grounding.