KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is on the right track to achieve the targeted 1.3 million visitor arrivals this year, said Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Jafry Ariffin.
in a statement said from Jan to Sept 2022, the state has recorded 1,190,513 visitor arrivals with an estimated tourism receipt of RM2.11 billion.
The amount is more than RM1.89 billion compared to RM0.597 billion recorded from Jan to Dec last year, he said.
On domestic arrivals, he said it registered an increase of 680 per cent with 1,046,656 visitors this year against Jan to Sept last year.
The international arrivals saw an increase of 6,441.9 per cent with 143,857 visitors against Jan to Sept last year.
Domestic, Singapore and European markets such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Netherlands are showing strong rebound and continue to lead the recovery, he said.
For total arrivals of Jan to Sept this year, we have reached 38.2 per cent of the 2019 figure of 3,111,884 visitor, he said.
“I am optimistic that with the continuous effort, slowly but surely, we will be able to reach the number of tourists as before the pandemic,” said Jafry.
Meanwhile, international flights currently record 47 flights a week from Singapore, Brunei, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand.
For domestic flights there are currently 119 flights per week, he said.
“I am happy to announce that there are upcoming international flights starting next month to January 2023, from Taipei; Narita, Japan; Busan and Hong Kong,” said Jafry.
Jafry believe that the increase of international flights will boost the tourism sector in the state.
He said the Sabah Tourism Board (STB) will continue to carry out various marketing and promotional activities such as e-vouchers and domestic travel stimulus.
It will also collaborate with tourism partners and impactful high visibility campaigns to further stimulate visitor arrivals to Sabah as well as to sustain destination visibility and strengthening Sabah’s competitiveness around the region, he said.
In addition, he said STB also continuously participate in physical trade and consumers fairs and roadshow to gain back market share and enhance destination visibility in the targeted markets such as in the United Kingdom, Middle East, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
