KUCHING: Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) has for 17 years now been organising the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) as a leisure event and the board feels that it is now ready to move up the value chain and come up with a business event – Borneo World Music Expo – which was mooted last year.
“This is also to position Sarawak as a destination for art, culture and music,” STB CEO Datuk Rashid Khan told a press conference here yesterday.
He added that this event will grow the meeting and exhibition segments related to music.
It is the ambition of the board to grow this event into a world recognised annual exposition for the professionals and the trade visitors within the international music scene.
Scheduled to be held a week before the RWMF, the expo will integrate a trade fair, musical showcases, conferences, exhibitions and networking sessions which could promote culture and music.
“It is specially designed to expose Asian and ethnic musicians to the international market,” he said.
According to him, the main objective of the expo is to draw especially foreign tourists to Sarawak a week prior to the RWMF for business and leisure and see for themselves the culture, nature and adventures that are the niche product offerings of Sarawak, Borneo.
“While the rainforest is about entertainment, the Expo is about the trade networking, information dissemination and business behind the entertainment industry,” he said.
He said the expo seeks to be the market place where professionals come to present or to hire their services.
On the other side, programmers need to have a big pool with vast variety to consider and to choose from when it comes to selecting the line-up for their events.
The expo is about bringing two parties together where they will have a chance to show and tell and buy and sell, he said.
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