Jakarta. Indonesia's tourism sector still moves at a sluggish pace amid the Covid-19 pandemic, as statistics showed that the country only recorded 1,185,482 foreign tourist arrivals from January-September 2021.

"The accumulated foreign tourist arrivals from January-September 2021 fell 67 percent, in comparison to the same period last year which had about 3,592,075 arrivals,” Margo Yuwono, the head of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), said on Monday.

In January-September 2021, the number of tourists visiting from the Oceania region saw the largest decline at 91.99 percent, compared to the same period in 2020. Tourist arrivals from Asia outside Asean experienced the smallest drop at 48.14 percent. 

Nationality-wise, East Timorese tourists made up the lion's share of Indonesia's international tourists arrivals for the same period. They recorded 628,990 or about 53.06 percent of the arrivals.

Malaysia was also the next biggest source of tourists with about 370,680 arrivals (31.27 percent), BPS data showed.

Followed by China, Papua New Guinea, and the US with 40,810 (3.44 percent), 21,040 (1.78 percent), and 16,320 (1.38 percent) arrivals, respectively.

In September 2021, Indonesia saw 126,510 foreign tourist arrivals. This was a 15.08 percent drop in comparison to September 2020.

The figure, however, represented a 1.41 percent increase if compared to August 2021, according to BPS.

The room occupancy rate in star-rated hotels in September 2021 stood at 36.64 percent.

North Kalimantan had the highest room occupancy rate with 58.09 percent.

Followed Bengkulu and North Maluku with 56.58 percent and 55.44 percent, respectively. Popular tourist destination Bali only had 9.46 percent rooms occupied, making it the province with the lowest room occupancy rate.