“They are committed to build 300 hotel rooms in a span of one year and 100 villas on 100 hectares of land,” Darmono said at the Calendar of Event Wonderful Morotai Island Festival (CoE WMIF) 2017 event on Friday.

The first stage of investment is valued at around 100 million dollars, equal to 1.3 trillion rupiah. The investor, a company said to have 60 hotels in China, has made a deal to gradually increase the investment to one billion dollars.

Meanwhile, the Tourism Ministry promises to renovate the airport’s runway to accommodate 130-passenger planes.

“As one of ten prioritized tourism destinations, we are targeting 11,000 tourists to visit Morotai this year, and we’re hoping for an increase to 500,000 by 2019,” said Tourism Minister Arief Yahya. (asw)