Why Tropical Island Paradise?

To the European mind, tropical islands are bountiful places offering travellers an escape from everyday realities and a temporary materialisation of what is imagined to be the good life. The jet aircraft has brought island paradises tantalizingly close for the relatively affluent of the world.

For North Americans the Caribbean is delightfully close as are the islands of the Indian Ocean for more affluent South Africans. Despite their undoubted appeal, neither the Caribbean nor the Indian Ocean have quite the intoxicating attraction of the South Pacific. These previously most inaccessible of tropical islands now face the challenges of adapting to an influx of pleasure-oriented travellers from throughout the world, or in the case of those which have not yet established themselves as tourism destinations, to solicit such an influx. Obviously, it can be seen on the Islands of Indonesia that are visited by tourists without preparation or not ready to be a tourist destination.

The Indonesian who inhabit the paradise, to which so many Europeans have aspired, are also under pressure to adapt to the temporary holiday migrations from across the globe. Australians have long regarded Indonesian as their back-yard and the Islands paradise have always been more accessible for them than for residents of the Northern Hemisphere. Australian travellers are having to share Indonesia holiday resorts with visitors from throughout the world. But do Australians really need to travel overseas to find the type of paradise so deeply embedded in the western imagination? Australia’s own Great Barrier Reef is fringed by numerous tropical islands. Does this imply that paradise may be experienced without the need for a passport? Do Australians weigh up the prospect of travel to Queensland with its connotation of patriotism and of buying Australian against the option of an overseas trip? Why Australians are interested to go to Indonesia? Might both destinations lose their allure because paradise has become too easily accessible, too prone to excessively hyperbolic promotion and too easy to compare image with reality?

Not only the people of Australia who looked at Indonesia. Even the Russians also like the islands. That is why Indonesia is a paradise for those of developed countries. Then, can we take advantage of this global trend? All depends on how we manage marine tourism in Indonesia.