THE city of Batavia was once the bustling heart of the Dutch East Indies, a port town with an abundance of pepper, nutmeg and other exotics bound for the west. Now it is a rundown northern district of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, stuffed with crumbling colonial mansions. A peek through the rotting shutters of one grand pile reveals tree trunks and a carpet of leaves. The building is popular with Indonesian film-makers, says Agus, a local guide: “They use it for spooky movies.”
Old Batavia is a respite from the traffic and smog of Jakarta, perhaps South-East Asia’s least prepossessing capital. As dusk approaches locals congregate happily in its central square, which boasts a handful of museums. But to many tourists it seems an unpolished diamond—much like Indonesia itself. Nearly 10m foreign sightseers will enter the country this year, many heading straight to the bars and beaches of the island of Bali. That is a record, but still well short of the 12m or so who visit tiny Singapore, and a league away from Thailand’s roughly 26m (see chart). Inflexible visa rules, dangerous transport, annual forest fires and lingering worries about terrorists, who struck at tourists several times during the 2000s, are among many of Indonesia’s handicaps.
Boosting tourism is a priority for Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s president. Travellers’ dollars would go some way towards mitigating the effects of China’s slowdown, which has slashed demand for Indonesian commodities and pushed its currency, the rupiah, to a 17-year low. As well as pepping up domestic travel, the government wants at least 20m foreign tourists to visit annually by 2020. Tourism officials have plenty to work with. Countless pristine beaches fringe Indonesia’s 13,000 islands. Its people are welcoming, and its brand of Islam largely tolerant.
Some early policies have looked bold. For the first time tourism now has a government ministry of its own. Its promotional budget this year quadrupled to nearly $100m, and could rise to $300m in 2016. In October the country hired Ogilvy, a big advertising agency, to boost its image. Immigration authorities have at last granted visa-free entry to tourists from dozens of countries, batting back nationalists who say states that benefit should open their borders in return.
But old Batavia’s struggles are informative. Plans to revitalise the district have come and gone, with limited effect. Officials have rebuked private owners for letting their properties decay, but offered few incentives to restore the buildings. Some locals resent any effort to preserve remnants of Indonesia’s not-fondly-remembered colonial past. Others fear government planners will rig up a sterile ghetto for monied foreigners.
The most recent initiative—a master-plan drawn up by a consortium from the public and private sectors, formed two years ago—is the best chance yet of breaking the logjam. It hopes to restore many dozens of dilapidated mansions, and attract businesses to use them. Progress is gradual but promising: the old Dutch post office has had a facelift, and Batavia’s grand state house has been scrubbed up too.
The endgame is to have the old town included in the UN’s list of World Heritage Sites. That would be good news for tour guides such as Agus. He has only enough custom to give a handful of tours each week, largely to Dutch travellers revisiting their ancestors’ haunts. During the rainy season there is almost no work at all.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "They wish you were here"
