KUCHING: Tourist arrivals to the state have dropped 74 percent from 4.6 million in 2019 to 1.2 million in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak.
Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah said in tandem with the decline, the tourism receipt also saw a 75 percent reduction as compared to 2019 to just RM2.88 billion in 2020 which is an estimated total loss of RM8.69 billion.
“From January to February this year, visitor arrivals plunged 96.99 percent to 22,034 as compared to the same corresponding period last year,” he told a press conference after chairing the Sarawak Tourism Steering Committee Meeting 2021 at a hotel, here today.
Despite this, Abdul Karim believed that the gradual rollout of Covid-19 vaccines will be able to combat the issue as it is expected to help restore visitors’ confidence of travel, to ease travel restrictions and to slowly normalise travel this year.
“The government is giving top priority in safeguarding the safety and wellbeing of the people by trying to secure a steady supply of Covid-19 vaccines as soon as possible to cover more than 80 percent of the country’s population. This will definitely bring new hope for Malaysia to get out of the Covid-19 crisis and allow the country to gradually recover.
“For Sarawak, the state government aims to complete its vaccination programme by August of this year; therefore domestic travel within Malaysia and Sarawak is expected to slowly recover in the second half of 2021, anticipating a total visitor arrival of 1.1 million with an estimated tourism receipt of RM2.64 billion.
“However, this estimated target will depend very much on the Covid-19 global situation. Meanwhile, we are following up closely with the Federal Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture (Motac) on the vaccination passport and green bubble travel,” he added.
In addition to this, Abdul Karim said his ministry had agreed to increase the current annual grant to the Sarawak Tourism Federation from RM50,000 to RM100,000.
“My Ministry has also increased the Divisional Tourism Task Group (DTTG) annual grant allocation from RM5,000 to RM10,000 for each division to further promote their division’s tourism.
“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, generate more income and create more employment for our local communities,” he urged.
