TravTalk India Online Magazine
With VFS Global as its India representative, Indonesia’s Bintan Resorts is expecting to ride the wave of sporting events to attract more Indians. This will be alongside the mainstay segments of leisure, MICE and weddings. With easy visas and its own airport coming up by 2027, the destination could really take off with the India market.
Hazel Jain from Bintan
Abdul Wahab, Chief Operating Officer, Bintan Resorts, is confident that India market will return to favour Bintan Resorts soon, based on a survey it conducted, along with VFS Global – its recently-appointed representative in India. He provides updates on island developments and plans to grow numbers from India.
“We are excited to partner with VFS Global to introduce the beauty and charm of Bintan Island to the Indian market,” says Wahab. “This collaboration will elevate Bintan’s status as a must-visit destination for Indian tourists. We look forward to offering them exceptional experiences that only Bintan Island can provide,” he adds.
Promotions will include focusing on digital and social media platforms, B2B sales, and organising workshops and familiarisation trips. A major initiative will be working closely with the travel trade partner friends, which both partners have cultivated over the years, to promote the island to their clients. “Sports tourism is one of the things we want to focus on. This means mass sports, such as marathons, triathlons, Iron Man, bicycle race, and, of course, golf. We want to offer what Singapore does not. These large sporting events cannot be done in Singapore, but Bintan is perfect for them. You can ride a bicycle for 100 kilometre and not see one traffic light!” Wahab explains.
Hotels and airport coming up
The focus is also on developing hotel inventory. Bintan Resorts has about 2,800 hotel keys right now, including Four Points by Sheraton Bintan, Lagoi Bay that opened last February; Indigo and Holiday Inn are ready, and Mövenpick will open by end of the year. This will translate to about 1,200 keys. As the master developer, Bintan Resorts’ plan is to add another 3,000-4,000 keys in the next three to four years. “We are building 10 more hotels. With that Bintan Resorts can be called as an international resort. These will also be perfect venues for exhibitions. Besides hotels, we are also building our airport. We hope that the airport, the convention centre and 3,000 more rooms will be ready by 2027,” Wahab says. “The airport will be privately owned by our company owned by Bintan Resorts but we will fly international. We have an MoU with Indonesia’s national airline Garuda. We are also in talks with IndiGo, and have MoUs with Japan Airlines, Korean Air and Lufthansa. We hope that by 2027, all these flights start landing in Bintan,” he adds.
Currently, one can take a one-hour ferry from Singapore to Bintan. But this is limited to 12 ferries per day. “If these 12 ferries are supplemented by our international airport, we can easily welcome 5,000-6,000 arrivals per day,” he opines.
Good to know
The island has been gazetted by the Indonesian government for sports tourism over the past decade, and events like the Bintan Triathlon and Gran Fondo are already attracting visitors. Beyond triathlons, Bintan offers a range of water sports like parasailing and paragliding, waterskiing and jetskiing, surfing and windsurfing, scuba and snorkelling.
