"About 80 companies are joining our pavilion," the director of international tourism promotion at the Culture and Tourism Ministry, Noviendi Makalam said on the sidelines of the exhibition in Kuala Lumpur on Friday.
The number of Indonesian tourism companies taking part in the expo was quite large as a number of tourist destination areas in Indonesia such as Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, West Java and Yogyakarta opened their own stands in the expo, he said.
"The Indonesian companies have high interest in taking part in the expo. But because the available space is very limited we cannot accommodate all of them," he said.
The high interest of the Indonesian tourism companies participating in the expo was inseparable from the rising number of Malaysian tourists visiting Indonesia, he said.
Singapore and Malaysia were currently among the top sources of foreign tourists visiting Indonesia, he said.
Asked about the situation of the expo in the first day on Friday, he said it seemed that all participants were happy because many of them had received orders to take part in their tourism package programs.
"The first day of the expo is good. More and more people visited the expo and many of them made reservation with Indonesian tourism companies taking part in the expo," he said.
The three-day expo will end on Sunday.
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Editor: Bambang
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