By Nancy Nais
KUCHING, March 16: Sarawak has lost an estimated RM8.69 billion in tourism receipts last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Disclosing this, Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah said the state’s visitor arrivals had dropped 74 per cent, from 4,662,419 in 2019 to 1,199,872 in 2020.
“Our tourism receipts had declined 75 per cent as compared to 2019 to just RM2.88 billion in 2020.
“From January to February this year 2021, visitor arrivals plunged 96.99 per cent to 22,034 as compared to the same corresponding period in 2020,” Karim said after chairing the Sarawak Tourism Steering Committee Meeting 2021 (STSC) here today.
His ministry, he said, has therefore implemented short-term measures for the tourism, arts and culture industry recovery which includes building confidence to travel through stringent Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) endorsed by the State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC), Discounted Travel Incentives through the Sia Sitok campaign to promote domestic intra-state travel, Visitor Incentives Packages (VIP) to promote inter-state travel, Online Ecosystem Fund, helping the hotel industry by designating hotels as quarantine centres, providing incentives to encourage homegrown business events, and conduct continuous capacity building, virtual market place or travel mart and research to prepare for the return of tourists.
“The Sia Sitok Sarawak Tour Package 1.0 has indeed generated good response therefore we extended its traveling period to March 31 this year. As of today, it has generated more than RM1.5 million in sales for 941 tour packages for 5,668 people.
“My ministry and Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) will continue Sia Sitok in version 2.0 where 60 packages will be launched on March 31. The wider range of domestic tour packages will create more interest among locals to travel widely in our state while benefiting the touring industry as a whole,” Karim said.
He also gave assurance that the government is working with the hotel industry through Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) and Malaysian Budget Hotels Association (MyBHA) to launch Sia Sitok Accommodation which will offer incentive packages for hotel stays.
At the same time, Abdul Karim announced an increase in annual grants for the Sarawak Tourism Federation from the current RM50,000 to RM100,000.
The Divisional Tourism Task Group (DTTG) will also received an increase in its annual grant from RM5,000 to RM10,000 per division.
“This is to further promote each division’s tourism activities and therefore I would like to urge more active involvement and closer linkages of the government agencies and tourism industry players to further strengthen our roles.
“I hope that through our collaboration with industry players, our tourism industry continues to prosper by bringing in more visitors, generating more income and creating more employment for our local communities,” Abdul Karim said.
Besides STSC, he said his ministry has been engaging with the industry frequently through various platforms and opportunities such as Sarawak Tourism Coordination Committee (STCC), Tourism Action Task Force, Tourism Products Update Sessions, Sarawak Tourism Master Plan Studies Workshop, Sarawak Economic Action Council (SEAC), Tourism Working Group and DTTG through video conferencing due to restrictions imposed in view of the Covid-19 pandemic. — DayakDaily
