By Nancy Nais
KUCHING, Aug 26: Sarawak is a relatively unexplored destination for Indian travelers, says Travel Agent Federation of India’s (TAFI) president Ajay Prakash.
Since the Indian market contributed 735,309 arrivals (22 percent) to Malaysia in 2019, majority of them only know or heard of Kuala Lumpur or Penang. To boost its visibility in India, Sarawak is set to host the TAFI Convention 2022 next month.
More than 500 international delegates are expected to attend the event from Sept 20-23 at the Borneo Convention Centre Kuching.
Describing it as a golden opportunity to ramp up Sarawak, Minister of Tourism, Creative Industry and Performing Arts Sarawak (MTCP) Dato Sri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah said now is the time to showcase to Indian travel agent partners on why Sarawak should be their next destination of choice when it comes to tourism and business events.
TAFI has organized their convention in Malaysia twice — in Kuala Lumpur (1999) and Kota Kinabalu (2007).
TAFI Convention 2022 will be the third convention that will be held in Malaysia.
“The TAFI convention will highlight Sarawak’s diverse ethnicities which comprise 28 ethnic tribes, all with their own unique traditions, lifestyles, music, food and handmade crafts.
“TAFI delegates will get to learn about Sarawak as an attractive multifaceted destination for the Indian market,” Abdul Karim said at the pre-event press conference today.
Among the exciting tribal activities planned throughout the conference are live cultural and music performances, live food demonstrations and traditional handicraft exhibition to maximise their Sarawak’s cultural and culinary experience during the convention.
Abdul Karim further added that since Indian tourist arrivals to Malaysia during pre-pandemic in 2019 had shown a positive trend with a 15 percent growth rate and India was ranked fifth place in terms of visitor arrivals to Sarawak, the country marks a significant potential for the State to tap into this market.
There has been an increase of 304 per cent in visitor arrivals from India during the period of January to July 2022 compared to the same time period in 2021.
When Sarawak began tapping into India as a new tourism market in 2019, Abdul Karim said the effort was intensified in 2020 through Sarawak Tourism Board’s participation in a series of virtual participation by Tourism Malaysia Chennai involving South Indian travel agents, ITB Asia India in 2021, followed by ITB Asia India in April of this year.
“The TAFI Convention 2022 in Kuching is indeed a culmination of all the efforts in promoting Sarawak in India for the past two years, and I am confident that more promotional initiatives are being planned and will be executed in the future that will boost both Sarawak and India’s tourism industry after the pandemic.
“As we see signs of recovery for international travel, the Sarawak Government welcomes TAFI delegates with open arms and I hope that the dialogues and discussions will drive more future collaborations between Sarawak and India’s tourism stakeholders in efforts to boost our respective tourism industries,” he said.
Meanwhile, Director-General Tourism Malaysia Dato Zainuddin Abdul Wahab who was also present at the press conference said the resumption of scheduled international flights from India has been timely in promoting Malaysia to Indian travellers and for that, Tourism Malaysia is anticipating a 30 percent increase in the post-pandemic arrivals to Malaysia this year. — DayakDaily
