By Karen Bong, Ling Hui and Lian Cheng
KUCHING, April 17: Sarawak reported the highest drop in visitor arrivals by 90 per cent for the month of January this year, with less than 10,000 arrivals as compared to 400,000 arrivals in the same period of 2020.
Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, in revealing the devastating figure, also pointed out that the number of visitor arrivals to Sarawak fell by 75 per cent in 2020 due to the consequences of Covid-19.
“No doubt that tourism is one of the hardest hit industries by Covid-19, not only affecting Sarawak, Sabah and Peninsula Malaysia but the whole world.
“The pandemic has dashed our target for five million visitor arrivals to Sarawak in 2020 which we initially thought we would be able to hit following extensive preparations of programmes including the Visit Sarawak Year 2020.
“But the MCO (Movement Control Order) came in March last year and everything we had planned for went haywire and the industry was badly affected,” he told DayakDaily in an interview on Friday (April 16).
Elaborating on the impact of tourism on Sarawak’s economy, Abdul Karim pointed out that the economy is still quite strong even though the tourism industry which involved many other sectors suffered greatly, as the State does not entirely depend on tourism revenue but diverse revenue resources including oil and gas.
“Tourism GDP (Gross Domestic Product) only accounts for less than 20 per cent of the State’s economy as we have a diversity of resources including oil and gas.
“Our economy is quite a mix and is better and more balanced due to the diversity as tourism does not take up a big chunk.
“So as long as we can maintain along that line (20 per cent contribution to GDP), I will be quite happy,” he said.
Still aiming at the five million visitor arrivals’ target, Abdul Karim however acknowledged that it was not possible to achieve in the next one or two years, not until Covid-19 has been subdued, confidence in travel has been restored and air corridors are open up again.
“We know that anything that hits rock bottom will soon rise up again like the stock market. I believe we are almost at the lowest point and the (travel) confidence will be rebuilt slowly but surely.
“But how long it will take to bring up the confidence for travel to start again may take one or two or more years,” he said.
Despite that, Abdul Karim highlighted that Sarawak is able to sustain the tourism industry after one year by restrategising its plans to put focus on local travel which led to the creation of Sia Sitok Sarawak (SSS), an intra-state tourism campaign that has been extended for the second edition this year.
“We know that the fear of travelling is inside everyone around the world. We have made a lot of adjustments and that’s why we came up with Sia Sitok Sarawak because we know for now, we cannot expect visitors from outside Sarawak, so we have to get visitors from within like Miri to visit Kuching and vice versa,” he shared.
Abdul Karim reported that the SSS campaign has taken off well as many Sarawakians loved it, giving them the opportunity to explore and find adventures and treasures in Sarawak’s own backyard.
“We cannot be promoting (to markets) too far away. We have to start promoting to our regional neighbours like Singapore and Brunei. We are also looking into the travel bubble with these two countries once the situation permits,” he added. — DayakDaily
