Garuda launches Denpasar-Guangzhou JAKARTA. National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia has launched a direct flight plying the route between Denpasar and Guangzhou, China.

"The new Denpasar-Guangzhou route adds to the Indonesia-China routes served by Garuda Indonesia,” Garuda service director Nicodemus P.Lampe said on Sunday during an event to launch the new route at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar on Sunday.

Currently, Nicodemus said, the publicly listed airline company had 24 flights serving Indonesia-China routes every week. Ten flights weekly serve the Guangzhou-Jakarta route, followed by Shanghai-Jakarta with seven flights, Beijing-Jakarta with four and Beijing-Denpasar with three. The Guangzhou-Denpasar flight route service would see a thrice-weekly service, he added.

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Using a Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft with a flight code of GA 896, Garuda flights will run on the route every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. The flight will take off at 11:45 p.m. from Denpasar and land at 5 a.m. local time in Guangzhou.

Meanwhile, the Guangzhou-Denpasar route, which uses a flight code of GA 897, will operate every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. It will take off at 6:15 a.m. local time from Guangzhou and land in Denpasar at noon.

The Boeing 737-800 NG carrier has a capacity of 12 business class seats and 150 economy class seats.

The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded that the number of Chinese tourists visiting Indonesia reached 926,750 in 2014, still lower than the number of tourists from Australia, Malaysia and Singapore, each of which send more than one million a year.

In terms of spending, however, Chinese visitors are extravagant than tourists than those from Australia, Malaysia and Singapore. On average, one Chinese tourist spends US$1,059 while Malaysian and lose only to Australian tourists, who spent $1,598 per person in 2014.

The growth rate of Chinese tourists in Indonesia is also promising. In the last 10 years, the number of Chinese tourists in Indonesia has grown by 36.49 percent per year on average. Meanwhile, the number of Australian and Malaysian tourists has grown by 13.87 percent and 9.56 percent per year, respectively. The number of Singaporean tourists has grown by only 0.83 percent annually in the last 10 years. (Anton Hermansyah)