Indonesia ready to welcome Chinese tourists with "red carpet": tourism minister

JAKARTA, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian Minister for Tourism and Creative Economy Sandiaga Uno said on Monday that the Southeast Asian country is ready to welcome Chinese tourists following China's optimized COVID-19 strategy.

"We are ready to welcome Chinese tourists with a red carpet," Uno said at a weekly news briefing in the country's capital Jakarta.

"We just need to follow our CHSE (cleanliness, health, safety and environment sustainability) standard just like what we have been doing all this time," he said.

Uno said before the pandemic, China had always topped the list of the number of tourists coming to the country's tourist destinations.

Statistics Indonesia (BPS) recorded 2.07 million Chinese tourist arrivals in 2019. However, since the outbreak of the pandemic, the number has drastically dropped, with only 94,924 Chinese tourists coming to Indonesia during January-October 2022.

This year, Uno said, Indonesia expects at least 253,000 Chinese tourists to visit the country.