Saturday, October 31, 2015

Experience Sarawak Best Packages Dekat Je - Domestic tourism gets boost from Tourism Malaysia


KUCHING: Tourism Malaysia is going all out to promote domestic tourism, particularly Sarawak’s, by introducing travel packages leading to the year-end school holidays.

The tourism promotion agency launched its ‘Experience Sarawak Best Packages Dekat Je’ here yesterday to attract visitors from throughout the country.

This tourism campaign, in collaboration with the Sarawak Tourism Board (STB), features 50 packages by 16 travel agencies that are divided into several segments such as adventure and nature, city tour, culture and heritage, cycling and bike ride, sports tourism, ‘voluntourism’, edu-tourism, birding, golfing, angling and diving.

“According to the annual studies of domestic tourism by the Department of Statistics Malaysia, Sarawakians themselves are major suppliers and contributors to domestic tourism here. Other states that contribute to tourist arrivals in Sarawak are visitors from Kuala Lumpur, Sabah, Selangor, Kedah and Johor.

“Sarawak, being the largest state in Malaysia, is blessed with a rich diversity of tourism products that can lead to the development of many innovative and unique packages to suit every budget, interest, market and requirement,” said Tourism Malaysia Domestic Promotion director Iskandar Mirza Mohd Yusof when officiating at the launch of this tourism campaign.

Present to witness the launch were state Tourism Malaysia director Salahuddin Mohd Arrifin, Tourism Malaysia Corporate Communication director Azizah Aziz and STB Marketing director Benedict Jimbau.

Iskandar added that the 4.8 million visitor arrivals in the state last year comprised of 1.8 million domestic visitors and three million international visitors. Tourism receipt in 2014 came up to RM10.686 billion and the top three international source markets for Sarawak were Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines.

As of August this year, the state received a total of 3.1 million visitors comprising of 57 per cent domestic and 43 per cent international visitors. Although this marked a decline of 0.7 per cent, he mentioned that domestic tourist arrivals here have increased due to the ‘Dekat Je’ campaign since its launch in June.

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