The Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (WTO) Thaleb Rivai believes that Indonesian tourism would recover soon from Friday's Jarkata hotel explosions thanks to their past experience, the Antara news agency reported Saturday.
"The WTO's Secretary General Thaleb Rivai called me this morning and said that the agency believes that we could handle the effect of the explosion soon," the Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Watjik was cited as saying.
The minister said that in the Asia Pacific tourism parliamentary meeting in Cebu of the Philippines last year, the WTO had appointed Indonesia to share its experience in making a crisis center to tackle the negative effects of Bali bombing against tourism.
He added that the WTO admitted Indonesian success in establishing the crisis center and made it as a role model.
"Based on the experience, the WTO believes that we could tackle the negative effects on the JW Marriot and Ritz Carlton bombings soon," Watjik said.
Furthermore, he said, the secretary general offered technical assistance to the ministry to recover Indonesian tourism following the incident.
"We also asked the secretary general to help us to explain to the world that Indonesia had very vast area, so there are many safe and comfortable tourism destinations to visit," he said.
Watjik also said that the secretary general expressed his condolence over the incident.
The ministry had established a crisis center in Sahid Jaya Hotel to tackle the bombing effect, functioned as the information and data center related to the bombing.
(Xinhua News Agency July 18, 2009)
