Three million tourist target for Sabah achievable, says organisation chairman

KOTA KINABALU: The three million tourist target for Sabah in 2024 is achievable, says a local tourism organisation chairman.

Sabah Association of Tour and Travel Agents (Satta) chairman Datuk Seri Winston Liaw said some 70% of tourist arrivals in the state were visitors from Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak.

“We should put more effort on international arrivals like approaching more airlines to fly from China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia (among others),” he added when contacted on Thursday (Jan 18).

Liaw said that Sabah will have growth of between 20% and 30% this year compared to 2023.

“The state Tourism, Culture and Environment Ministry as well as the Sabah Tourism Board (STB) however still need to work hard to achieve the target,” he added.

Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Christina Liew had on Monday (Jan 15) said the state’s initial tourist arrival target of 2.8 million in 2024 had been amended to three million instead.

Liew said this is owing to the encouraging development of the tourism sector last year when Sabah received 2.5 million, exceeding the target by 300,000 and collected some RM4.6bil as a result.

“In line with this, the STB must work hard in reaching this year’s target,” she said.

On this, Liaw suggested the STB rope in local agents under its wing at foreign roadshows to promote the state.

He added that Sabah should also consider spreading its market to cover education, medical and wellness as well as sports tourism.

“The government should work out an incentive system to encourage tour operators to be involved in these new markets,” he said.

“Sabah should also stay open minded, to encourage meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) tourism by allow event organisers to operate big and international standard concerts, international cultural parades,” added Liaw.

For example, Liaw said that the Nine Emperor Gods Festival parade could attract international visitors.

“Many foreign tourists followed the parade in 2023 from beginning to end. Aside from this, we should encourage international festivals like music festivals and world beauty pageants,” he said.

Towards this end, he urged the government to quickly green-light ticket sales once such events are approved.

“This is especially for police permits. There have been many instances where organisers have too little time to sell tickets as the permit approval comes very late, which hinders the sales and marketing of the event,” he said.

“If the events always end up being unprofitable, this will then discourage them,” added Liaw.