Jakarta – The tourist industry in West Nusa Tenggara – home to popular tourist destination Lombok – has yet to recover following a strong earthquake in July 2018 that devastated infrastructure in the fast-growing province for tourism.
The West Nusa Tenggara chapter of Statistics Indonesia (BPS NTB) said the occupancy rate of star-rated hotels in the province declined to 32.63 percent in February from 32.84 percent in January.
"West Nusa Tenggara tourism has not shown any progress [since the earthquake]," said BPS TTB head Suntono on Monday as quoted by tempo.co.id, adding that in February 2018, the occupancy rate of star-rated hotels was 40.60 percent, meaning the figure declined 7.97 percent year-on-year.
Meanwhile, the occupancy rate of non-star-rated hotels in February was 20.60 percent, a decline of 3.77 percent from the rate in January. The average length of stay in the hotel also declined to 2.16 days in February from 3.16 days in January.
According to the BPS, hotels in the province welcomed 44,654 guests in February – 34,822 domestic tourists (77.98 percent) and 9,832 foreign tourists (22.02 percent).
A total of at 3,588 foreign tourists arrived via Lombok International Airport in February. Malaysia contributed the most tourists during that time with 1,517, followed by China with 670 tourists. (bbn)