Despite the Covid19 pandemic, our State Government the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Sarawak (MTAC) had to start the journey to recovery by building confidence among tourism industry players, starting with local tourism, inter-state, regional and gradually on the global sacle once the situation had returned to normal.
My ministry had been implementing short-term measures for recovery of the tourism, arts and culture industry with the support and active engagement with various tourism industry players and stakeholders.
These measures include building visitors' confidence in travel to Sarawak through strict SOPs that are endorsed by our State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) and offering discounted packages as travel incentive through various campaigns such the "Sia Sitok Kempen" in order to promote intra-state travel and "Visitor Incentive Packages" (VIP) to promote inter-state travel.
The availability of the "Online Ecosystem Fund" can also help our local hotels by designating them as quarantine centres, incentives to encourage home-grown business events, continuous capacity-building, the virtual market place or travel mart and research to prepare for the return of tourists were also initiated.
I have mentioned these during the press conference held after the recent Sarawak Tourism Steering Committee meeting which was attended by representatives and stakeholders of our local tourism and hospitality industry.
I applauded our Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) who worked closed with my ministry and industry players towards the success of the "Sia Sitok Sarawak Tour Package 1.0" which generated good response. In fact, we have extended the travelling period to March 31, 2021 and as of today, it has generated more than RM1,569,026 in sales for 941 tour packages and 5,668 pax.
The Sia Sitok 2.0 is offering a total of 60 packages for the period of March 31 to November 2021 and awider range of domestic tour packages will be created to target locals to travel in our state while benefiting the tourism industry as a whole.
The year 2020 was horrible for our state’s tourism industry where the visitors' arrivals dropped 74 per cent from 4,662,419 in 2019 to 1,199,872 in 2020 due to Covid19 pandemic. Compared to 2019, the tourism receipts in 2020 declined 75 per cent to just RM2.88 billion, with an estimated loss of RM8.69 billion.
The trend is the same in 2021 where the number of visitor arrivals in Sarawak for the first two months of this year was even lower than that recorded during the same months last year, with the number of domestic visitor arrivals only at 7,369 in February, compared to 199,893 in the same month last year, while there were only 1,600 foreign visitors in February 2021 compared to 111,275 in the same month last year.
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