Lokot Ahmad Enda Asst. Dep. Director for Cultural Tourism Destinations, Ministry of Tourism
Sharia is not the main focus of halal tourism

THE Best Halal Tourism and World's Best Halal Honeymoon awards at the World Halal Travel Summit last year prompted a number of regions around Indonesia to work on winning those awards. The interested provinces were Aceh and West Sumatra. The provincial administrations of these two provinces are now competing to develop halal (acceptable according to Islam) in their respective areas in the next three years. They are campaigning hard among tourism industry practitioners to develop this industry genre and allocating the necessary funding for the effort.

Lokot Ahmad Enda, who is assistant deputy director for the development of cultural tourism destinations at the tourism ministry, said in an interview that Indonesia has been late in developing halal tourism. In fact, the program was only seriously developed in Indonesia around 2012. "Even Thailand has been doing it for the last 15years and Malaysia started it 10 years ago," Lokot told Tempo English reporter Isma Savitri in an interview last April. Excerpts.