Abdul Karim (centre), Sharzede (second right) and other officials seen holding items related to the promotional activities of the Sia Sitok Sarawak version 2.0 Intra-State Tourism Campaign during the campaign’s launching ceremony at a hotel in Kuching yesterday. — Photo by Roystein Emmor
KUCHING: Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah encourages Sarawakians to become ‘Sarawak Ambassadors’ to help promote the state’s beauty on social media platforms.
Besides playing the role of ambassadors, he believes Sarawakians can also help to boost Sarawak’s tourism industry as ‘local tourists’ by visiting various attractions in Sarawak and explore the state and its wonders.
“I am also confident with the support of everyone – the government, industry partners and players – Sarawak will be able to stand, to rise, to heal and to further develop our tourism industry, making Sarawak tourism stand out again,” he said during the launching ceremony of the Sia Sitok Sarawak version 2.0 Intra-State Tourism Campaign yesterday.
He also said that his ministry and Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) together with industry players will ensure that stringent Covid-19 standard operating procedures (SOPs) are put in place for all attractions and destinations.
The SOPs include enforcement efforts by health authorities regularly to ensure compliance with health and safety protocols with the state’s tracing applications.
“You can rest assured and be confident that our attractions are safe for you to visit,” he said.
He added there is a need for Sarawak to actively promote its tourism products because it has been a year since Covid-19 hit the world and the impact has been catastrophic especially in the tourism, travel and hospitality sector; and Sarawak is no exception.
Abdul Karim informed that tourist arrival numbers for the first two months of this year was even lower than recorded during the corresponding months last year.
“The number of domestic visitor arrivals in the month of February 2021 was 7,369 compared to 199,893 in the corresponding month in the previous year, while there were only 1,600 foreign visitors in February 2021 compared to 111,275 in the corresponding month in 2020,” he said.
With visitor arrivals plummeting, he added, the tourism receipts for Sarawak in 2020 saw a drop of 75 per cent or RM8.69 billion to just RM2.88 billion, meaning the pandemic had truly affected and disrupted the way everyone lived, worked and travelled.
“Even with this sharp contrast in the statistics, my ministry together with STB is creating incentives, initiatives and programmes to continuously build up industry players’ confidence starting with local tourism, inter-state, regional and gradually global tourism once the situation returns to normal.
“We are implementing short-term recovery measures of the tourism industry with the support and active engagement of various tourism industry players,” he said.
Also present during the launching ceremony were STB chief executive officer Sharzede Salleh Askor, Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture permanent secretary Hii Chang Kee and other officials.
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