Industry Players' Proposal for the Draft Bill on Tourism

The government and the Indonesia’s House of Representatives are discussing the Draft Bill on Third Amendment to Law No. 10 of 2009 (“ Tourism Draft Bill ”) on Tourism (“ Tourism Draft Law ”). Public input is necessary for better legal products.

Vice Chairman for Organizational Affairs of the Central Board of the Indonesian Tourism Industry Association, Maulana Yusran, mentioned several proposals in the plan for the amendment.

First, regarding the National Tourism Development Master Plan (Rancangan Induk Pembangunan Pariwisata Nasional– “ Ripparnas ”). There is a plan for regional tourism development at the provincial and city/regency levels.

"The plan is drafted but its implementation has not been used as a reference so far. As a result, the drafting becomes wasted. If we propose, the master tourism plan should be at the provincial level," said Maulana to hukumonline.com.

The reason is that the regional government can cluster tourist attractions and amenities destinations. “We should not later destroy all natural resources to build hotels, for example. Because we always talk about sustainability, so any object will never become extinct,” he continued.

Secondly, they proposed the rights and obligations of the government and industry players. Because the current laws are not rigid regarding the obligations of the government.

For example, hotel tax, restaurant tax, entertainment tax, he said, in general, these are collected by the local government and submitted to the central government. The local government should allocate taxes for tourism development.