Surakarta, February 27, 2018 - Angkasa Pura Airports Branch of Adi Soemarmo Solo Airport encouraged stakeholders of Solo Raya tourism sector, especially local government, to make tourism development continuously and integrated. This effort was demonstrated by initiating the Solo Raya 2018 Collaborative Destination Development (CDD) Program with focus group discussion (FGD) format on Tuesday (27/2) at Hotel Alila Solo.
Initiation of Solo CDD in 2018 with the theme "Elevating Solo Raya as Tourism Destination" was a follow up of Solo CDD ever conducted in 2017 with theme "500 Thousand Foreign Tourist Arrivals to Solo Raya in 2025" and CDD Solo in 2015.
CDD was a program initiated by Angkasa Pura Airports since 2015 in the form of collaboration forums of various stakeholders of regional tourism industry to arouse the stakeholders to be more vigorous and more serious in developing the tourism industry and carry out tourism services in Solo Raya. This was important to assist the government in achieving the target of national tourist arrivals nationwide of 20 million people in 2019 and also contribute to the development of the regional economy.
"CDD aims to support the development of regional tourism potential in Indonesia's central and eastern regions, so that the tourism sector can serve as a regional development motor and improve the welfare of the people," said by Director of Marketing and Space Services Pura Airports Devy W. Suradji.
"In 2025 it is targeted that 3.5 million tourists come to Solo Raya, consisting of 3 million domestic tourists (wisnus) and 500 thousand foreign tourists (tourists). To support the achievement of the target, Angkasa Pura Airports held a series of Solo Raya CDD activities with several phases. The first phase of CDD was conducted in November 2015 by creating awareness on the importance of collaboration in developing Solo Raya tourism industry. The second phase of CDD in 2017, initiated the creation of an integrated travel and tourism master plan Solo Raya. While the third phase of CDD in 2018 will focus on infrastructure development including airport infrastructure, human resources development, destination development, and regional marketing activities" Devy said.
Related to the focus to develop the supporting infrastructure of tourism in 2018, Angkasa Pura Airports was conducting a beautification of the passenger terminal targeted for completion by the end of February 2018, the construction of the Airport Railway station is targeted to be completed in July 2018, the expansion of apron 148.5 square meters targeted finish in November 2018, and an expansion of 13,000 square meters of passenger terminal targeted for completion by early 2019.
In addition, marketing efforts that have been done by Angkasa Pura Airports to attract the attention of tourists to come to Solo Raya was holding the activities of Airport Running Series (ARS) in 2015 and fashion show Day Batik in September 2016. Meanwhile, to attract airlines to open or add routes to Solo by following the 2017 Asia Routes event in Okinawa Japan and providing incentives for airlines that opened new routes or increased the number of flights.
For information, CDD 2017 produced several recommendations such as collaboration among stakeholders in promoting a more vigorous campaign to market Solo Raya so that airlines that have opened new flight routes to Adi Soemarmo Airport could survive, creating innovation in the form of new spot development or main attraction in Solo Raya so as to attract tourists, made an international convention center to accommodate a variety of major events, collaboration in providing adequate road access infrastructure from the airport to tourist areas in Solo Raya.
The recommendation from other CDD 2017 was to improve the coordination between local government and central government in the effort of regional tourism development, tourism management of Solo Raya under one special agency so that no more sectoral ego, the proposal that the Mayor of Solo gather all stakeholders to form a coordination meeting "Collaborative Tourism Project" to discuss efforts to open flights from overseas to Solo.
For information, passenger traffic at Adi Soemarmo Solo Airport in 2017 reached 2.7 million passengers, up 27 percent compared to 2.6 million passenger traffic in 2016. This growth rate was the highest growth compared to other airports managed by Angkasa Pura Airports.
"Given the passenger growth of the past few years and the potential for the future, it is hoped that with good collaboration between airport operators, airlines, tour operators, and especially local governments, it is expected that the development of Solo Raya tourism industry will accelerate faster so that it positively impacts the growth of Solo Raya," Devy said.
