"Our ministry continued to support the government's efforts in reviving the tourism sector with strategic programs," Tayyiba noted during a webinar on Tuesday.
The ministry's secretary-general later pointed out that 12,548 out of 83,218 villages had no 4G network.
The ministry and cellular operators targeted infrastructure development for those villages to be achieved by the end of 2022 or early 2023.
In addition to infrastructure development, the ministry had run a program for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) called Go Online MSMEs to support them in adopting digital technology wherein MSMEs contributed 61.97 percent to the national economy.
A total of 26 thousand MSMEs have also been assisted to digitally sell their products in 10 priority tourism areas.
"We are also developing a digital platform for the Tourism Hub Network (JPHUB) that is aimed at finding information and booking destinations from the provincial level to the village level," she stated.
Moreover, the ministry had provided assistance for Tourism Villages in the form of English language training for tourism village managers, online shop utilization training for 16 village-owned enterprises, and MSMEs training through the Digital Entrepreneurship Academy.
"We hope that the Indonesian tourism sector would recover from the pandemic and continue to grow," Tayyiba remarked.
Based on data from the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy in 2020, only 25 percent of foreign tourists had visited Indonesia as compared to the previous years.
Some 409 thousand workers in the tourism sector had lost their jobs, and state revenue had declined by Rp20.7 billion.
Tayyiba believes that digital transformation can help revitalize tourism in an inclusive, empowering, and sustainable manner.
Sustainable digital transformation aims to fulfill the 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals, wherein all strata of society are expected to have digital access and secure digital space. People are also expected to be able to use digital technology productively and create added value from its use.
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Translator: Nanien Yuniar, Resinta S
Editor: Sri Haryati
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