TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies (ASITA) secretary-general Pauline Suharno said this year’s booking of air travel tickets has not been as lucrative as usual with most people opting to travel overseas.

“Domestic flight ticket sales remain high but not as high as last year. The majority of the flight was to Bali, Belitung, and Yogyakarta,” said Pauline to Tempo on Monday, December 23.

A number of low-cost carriers knowingly maintained high-quality services even though the market nearing the end of 2019 is not as high as last year. As mentioned by LCC, Lion Air's strategic corporate communications Danang Mandala Prihartono said the company will continue to monitor the dynamics across every flight route.

Danang argues passengers’ interest cannot only be determined by its daily booking volume and suggests to check a certain period’s statistics to determine whether demand has dropped or grown.

The dropping trend in the air travel industry is visible in the survey by the Transportation Ministry where they asked 2,200 families who participate in this year’s Christmas and New Year’s homecoming. Only 24 percent out of 16.41 million opted for air travel, one percent opted to travel by sea, meanwhile, the rest opted ground travel.

Angkasa Pura II technical director Djoko Murjatmodjo said passengers across all of its airports have dropped 18.85 percent from 112.6 million people to just 90.4 million.

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