One major difference between Indonesia, Singapore
and Malaysia is that Singapore has almost no wild nature, Malaysia has some,
and Indonesia has plenty. But when we look at who actually goes to visit this
nature, the order is reversed. Singapore’s and Malaysia’s nature receive far
more visitors than Indonesia’s. And those people also pay much more for the
received service.
How did Singapore and Malaysia manage to make
business out of something they don’t actually have all that much of?
I was
thinking about this conundrum last week when I had to be in Singapore, trying
to once again adhere to the continuously changing Indonesian visa and work
permit regulations. But this is not a piece complaining about Indonesian
bureaucracy, immigration rules, or the country’s attitude to foreign
professionals. Rather, I want to look at why Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia
manage their nature assets so differently.
Obviously,
one thing that Singapore and Malaysia know how to do very well is to cater to
general mass tourism. According to World Bank data,
Singapore received nearly 12 million visitors in 2013, Malaysia some 26
million, but Indonesia only 9 million.
The differences are obvious in
simple things, like the fact that at Changi Airport your bag is waiting on the
luggage carousel by the time you’re done with immigration. In contrast, after
making it past the immigration queues in Soekarno-Hatta, your arrival in Indonesia
starts with a 30 or 45 minutes wait before the bags finally come through at
slow intervals. At least the rather humorous sign, “Malaysia Truly Asia” that
used to hang in Terminal 2 arrivals has now been removed, so we are all a
little less confused.
Singapore
and Malaysia excel in providing high quality service. Take a visit to
Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay, not real nature, but a pretty nice replication
of it. Now they make you pay, S$28, to see an indoor garden. But it is actually
well worth it if you like seeing a stunning array of flowers. Its success is
obvious in the loads of people it attracts. In 2014, the gardens received 6.4 million visitors.
Multiply this with the entry price, and it adds up to $125 million dollar of
gross income per year. Not bad for a garden.
And people
really like it. On Tripadvisor, the Gardens by the Bay, get an average 4.5
stars, with 94 percent of the visitors considering the attraction “very good”
or “excellent.” In comparison, Indonesia’s most advanced competitor, the
Botanic Gardens in Bogor, receive just over one million visitors per year, of
which some 32,000 are foreigners. With a ticket price of about $1, a
quick calculation suggests that the gardens generate about $1.3 million in
annual revenues, or about 1 percent of those in Singapore.
These are
gardens though, so how do things compare for real nature? One of
Malaysia’s most visited national parks, Kinabalu in Sabah, receives some
500,000 visitors every year, each paying between $5 and $50
(depending on age and nationality) to climb the mountain, generating some $10
to $25 million of income per year.
On the
Indonesian side of Borneo, Tanjung Puting National Park is the most popular
with tourists, attracting some 7,000 annual visitors (both local and
international), about 1.5 percent the number of people visiting
Kinabalu. Tanjung Puting visitors generate some $140,000 in entrance fees. Even
Indonesia’s most popular park, Mount Bromo in East Java, which receives nearly
200,000 people per year, probably generates less than $700,000 in annual
entrance fees.
Why are so
few people visiting Indonesia’s nature? I guess, it does boil down to quality
of service and access. With nine out of 10 of
the world’s most unsafe airlines operating in Indonesia, it is not
always easy to get to an Indonesian park in one piece.
And once you
are there, the quality of accommodation, park guides, trails, and ease of
seeing wildlife is generally really poor. On Mount Kinabalu you see numerous
rare and endangered species close to the park headquarters. In Indonesian
parks, many mammals have been poached and birds caught and caged.
The poor
management of Indonesian parks needs to change if the government wants to cash
in on nature’s bounty. Either the government authorities need to step up their
level of professionalism and management accountability, or the government
should step aside, and allow the private sector in, as I argued earlier.
Indonesia is
able to deliver high-quality services in rural areas. Stay at an AMAN resort
hotel, if you need an example. But the country needs to stop striving for
mediocrity in park management and involve professionals who know what they are
doing.
Indonesia is
sitting on an extremely valuable and increasingly rare commodity – wild nature.
But Indonesia does such a poor job compared to its neighbors in generating
revenues from it.
I wrote about a magical island I
visited somewhere in Indonesia a while ago. I would love to get my
hands on the management of such an island and am sure that I could turn it into
a really well managed protected area with fantastic nature viewing.
But for now,
the conservation authorities do not seem likely to give up control of protected
area management any time soon. That’s a loss to Indonesia, unless these
authorities are forced to improve their act.
Erik
Meijaard coordinates the Borneo Futures initiative
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