Indonesia: Travel boom drives multi-billion dollar airports expansion

Indonesia’s largest airport operator is looking to spend billions of dollars to build a new facility in Jakarta and upgrade the existing one to cater to an unprecedented travel boom and compete with neighboring countries for tourism revenue. Angkasa Pura II, the state-owned operator of 16 airports across Indonesia, will conclude a feasibility study for a greenfield airport in the archipelago’s capital this year that may require an investment of about 100t rupiah ($7b), according to President Director Muhammad Awaluddin. The company is already spending hundreds of million dollars in adding a new terminal and a runway in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, he said. Jakarta is the latest to join cities in Southeast Asia including Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur to expand capacity as travel demand in the Asia-Pacific region is set to double in the next two decades on rising wealth. Passenger traffic in Soekarno-Hatta may surge 46% to top 100m within a decade, Angkasa Pura estimates. With President Joko Widodo identifying tourism as a key foreign-exchange earner in the face of declining exports of oil and gas, better airport connectivity will be important in luring travellers, Awaluddin said. Story has a lot more background.<br/>