UN agency calls on tourists to continue visiting Indonesia to help quake recovery

Pursuing its policy of helping stricken countries to recover from natural disasters, the United Nations tourism agency has appealed to tourists to continue travelling to parts of Indonesia not damaged by the 27 May earthquake that struck the Yogyakarta area, killing more than 6,000 people and displacing 200,000 others.

Pursuing its policy of helping stricken countries to recover from natural disasters, the United Nations tourism agency has appealed to tourists to continue to travelling to parts of Indonesia not damaged by the 27 May earthquake that struck the Yogyakarta area, killing more than 6,000 people and displacing 200,000 others.

The best way to help is for travellers to keep on visiting, the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) declared at a meeting of its Risk Assessment and Management Working Group in Madrid.

“The tragic events in Central Java demonstrate the pressing need for UNWTO to strengthen and structure its preparedness and response support activities to address different types of crises continuously affecting tourism,” French Tourism Director Frédéric Pierret stressed.

Since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated a dozen countries in the region, killing more than 200,000 people and displacing millions more, UNTWO has been seeking to mitigate the impact in the tourism sector and this boost economic recovery.

Last year it called on the world’s media to take care in its coverage of destinations hit by the disaster so as to avoid a new “infodemic,” a repeat of the slump that hit Asian tourism two years earlier when an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) killed 774 people and infected more than 8,000 worldwide, the vast majority of them in China.

The working group, chaired by Mr. Pierret, had met to review UNWTO’s progress on bird flu preparedness and map out a new programme of activities for dealing with all types of tourism crises.

“The working group first met in March to deal with avian flu, but since then there have been two other unrelated crises – in Egypt (terrorist bombs) and in Indonesia - so its work will need to be expanded gradually to comprise all man-made and natural disasters, which may impact tourism,” UNWTO Secretary-General Francesco Frangialli said.

After terrorist bombings in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last July, the agency offered the country its full support in helping it to surmount the negative impact on its flourishing tourism industry. A second bomb attack in April in Dahab killed some 20 people.