TOURISM ON RIGHT TRACK

KOTA KINABALU: Businessman Mohd Redzuan Sufian was amazed with the frequency of flights cruising the sky while he was having his dinner at the Waterfront, the popular hangout for both locals and visitors alike here.

The thunderous sound of airplanes taking off from the Kota Kinabalu International Airport, located about 10km from the city centre, is too great to go unnoticed.

“How many are there (planes)? It has only been about 10 or 15 minutes….a few I think,” the Shah Alam-based contractor asked his Sabahan friend Sharif Baba.

“A lot of them stop here. It’s one of the busiest airports, you know. And these flights must be carrying most of the people here (Waterfront),” said Sharif, referring to the visitors at the dining centre.

Sabah is becoming more popular among tourists, registering about 2.478 million tourist arrivals last year.

Currently, the average length of stay of domestic and international visitors is three nights and 8.2 nights respectively.

Tourism looks set to be the state’s main economic driver with the launch of the Sabah Development Corridor (SDC) as Sabah, bestowed with abundant natural attractions, has great potential to be a world-class tourist destination.

Among the SDC’s highlights in tourism development is to market Sabah as an exclusive holiday home destination, develop new tourism products anchored by signature resorts, encourage rural participation through community-based tourism and develop a one-district one-product programme.

According to the SDC blueprint, renowned signature resorts such as Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, Shangri-La and Bvlgari will be roped in to anchor new tourism products such as spa and wellness tourism in Kundasang and marine tourism in the islands.

The signature resorts will conduct their own market research and attune to what their customers want.

Malaysian International Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MICCI) Sabah chairman Datuk A. Arulpragasam said more hotels, especially in the three-star and four-star categories, need to be constructed to accommodate the higher rate of arrivals.

“Tourism is certainly going to boom. It’s not that the current hotels are insufficient. But when more people and tourists come, they need a place to stay and we need more places to accommodate them,” he added.

The state currently has 287 hotels with 12,367 rooms.

With a membership of 86, MICCI Sabah helps to promote trade, investment and tourism in the state.

Kota Kinabalu International Airport (KKIA), the second busiest in Malaysia, is serviced by 304 domestic flights and 110 international flights a week.

With the KKIA expansion exercise due to be completed this year, plans are underway to increase the number of flights to the airport.

“We can expect more traffic once the work at the airport is completed,” said Institute for Development Studies (IDS) Sabah executive director Datuk Mohd Yaakob Johari who is also the consultant for the SDC blueprint.