Tourism – Sabah Insights

Power to the people

September 24, 2024September 26, 2024 Sabah Insights

Tanjung Aru Beach Festival has galvanized Sabahans’ opposition to TAED

Sunset at Tanjung Aru Beach – Picture by Sri Pelangcongan Sabah

Ten years after its launching, the 7.1-billion-ringgit Tanjung Aru Eco Development to turn Sabah’s most famous and spectacular 2-km beach into a tourism hub remains in limbo all because of opposition from Sabahans and environmentalists. And this has led Christina Liew, minister of tourism, environment and culture, to quip that she has been reminded of “how powerful our community is” in a speech to launch the two-day Tanjung Aru Beach Festival at Prince Philip Park in Kota Kinabalu which ended on September 22. Her speech, which was delivered by her assistant Joniston Bangkuai, paid tribute to Sabahans for being a “living testament to their talent, creativity, and resilience” in their participation of the festival. And if the bosses of TAED think that the festival will mitigate the people’s objection to their project, they are wrong. Rather the festival has galvanized Sabahans’ opposition to it.

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Tourism

A Nanjing-Tawau frenzy

January 30, 2024January 30, 2024 Sabah Insights

Will chartered flights from China augur well for east coast tourism

Getting airlines to fly tourists from China to Tawau, the east coast agricultural town, has been a struggle. Previous attempts to set up direct flights between Chinese cities and Tawau have come to nought. So Christina Liew, Sabah’s minister of tourism, culture and environment, was understandably elated when the inaugural chartered flight carrying 157 Chinese tourists from Nanjing in eastern China touched down at Tawau airport on January 23. “I am excited that this new route will contribute to the growth and development of Tawau as a prominent international destination,” she said. But her optimism may be premature.

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Tourism

Beyond expectations

December 30, 2023January 3, 2024 Sabah Insights

A record RM13b tourism revenue despite sluggish growth last year

A new method of accounting for tourism has yielded a set of surprising figures. The inaugural Sabah tourism satellite account (TSA) released last week by the Sabah tourism ministry in Kota Kinabalu shows that tourism earned the state an all-time high of RM13b. This is despite a relatively sluggish recovery last year after two years of travel ban because of the Covid-19 pandemic. And it contrasts sharply with the RM9b earned in 2019 when the number of visitors to the state was the highest at 4.2m against a low 1.7m last year. The reason for this “discrepancy” is in the way tourism is defined and measured in the TSA prepared by the Sabah Tourism Board and Malaysia’s Department of Statistics.

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Tourism

Sabah Hospitality Fiesta mirrors ATI College’s success

December 20, 2023December 22, 2023 Sabah Insights

How one man builds a premier tourism school out of nowhere.

There was all round scepticism when Wong Khen Thau started Sabah’s first hospitality and tourism school in Kota Kinabalu 27 years ago. The hotel industry didn’t give him a chance to succeed because it thought that he was copying what hotels were already doing: on the job training of their frontline staff. Hoteliers didn’t think that he was offering anything new to the industry. And they were quite right to doubt him because Wong knew little about hotel and catering. He was a school teacher who had turned himself into a businessman selling home appliances. But all was not lost. His Asian Tourism Institute, staffed by a handful of hotel industry experts, received its first batch of 40 students for a six-month certificate course in food and beverage, housekeeping and front office operations – thanks to the sponsorship of then tourism minister Bernard Dompok. And from that small beginning, the Asian Tourism International College, as it is now known, has become the premier tourism and hotel and catering school which has produced more than 12,000 skilled workers for Sabah’s hotel industry, according to Mabel Cheong, the college’s registrar.

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Tourism

More than just a fun run through the rainforest

December 3, 2023December 21, 2023 Sabah Insights

Why Tawau Hills Park must be protected at all cost

“The Tawau Hills Park is not merely a backdrop for a run,” said Alesia Sion, deputy permanent secretary of the tourism, culture and environment ministry, at the Tropical Rainforest Run on November 26. “It is a sanctuary that deserves our utmost care and protection.” Indeed. The only reason that the 280-square-km park was set up in 1979 was to protect its water catchment from loggers. They had tried to chop down valuable tropical hardwood trees in one of the last remaining lowland virgin forests where some of the world’s tallest trees stand to almost 100 metres tall. Yet temptation reigns supreme. But state officials are banking on sports tourism to keep it in check.

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Tourism

Rainforest run returns with a vengeance

November 14, 2023December 21, 2023 Sabah Insights

Tourism minister wants it to be held yearly

*Tropical rainforest run returns to Tawau.*

Sabah’s inaugural tropical rainforest run got off to a promising start four years ago in the eastcoast timber town of Tawau. It attracted 230 runners. Six came from Kenya and nine from Indonesia. But three months later the Covid-19 outbreak scuttled all its future plans. The pandemic is over. And the run is returning to the Tawau Hills Park on November 26 with a field of 250 runners who include participants from Kenya, Australia, Canada, Japan, Indonesia, and Singapore.

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