KUCHING: Sarawak remain set on its target of five million tourists to visit the State in line with Visit Malaysia Year this year.

Minister for Tourism, Creative Industry and Performing Arts Dato Sri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah stressed that Sarawak has been targeting the five million tourists’ arrival threshold in the past few years and thus would hope it would finally achieve it this year.

“I would still want to get that target of five million. I thought that we would be able to achieve that last year,” Dato Sri Abdul Karim told a press conference at the D’Drift launching ceremony at Dayak Daily premises on Wednesday.

He disclosed that last year, Sarawak received 4,972,000 tourists, which was just 28,000 short to achieve the target.

“If we have another two days extra, we would have achieved our target,” he said.

For this year, Dato Sri Abdul Karim was optimistic that Sarawak would finally achieve the threshold target.

“I’m very sure we will get five million tourists this year especially with Air Borneo is there, the Visit Malaysia Year is there, and we have our own events that we have lined up for this year.

“Then probably for next year we will target 5.5 or 5.2 million tourists. But I’m very happy that the tourism in industry Sarawak is very vibrant,” he added.

Dato Sri Abdul Karim was also happy to learn that there will be a new hotel to be built at Gala City with over 200 rooms capacity which is expected to be ready by next year which is the year Sarawak will co-host the SEA Games.

For last year, the tourism industry generated RM12.6 billion in tourism receipts.

According to records, Brunei and Indonesia led the arrivals, followed by other countries such as Singapore, Philippines and China. -UKASnews

Prepared by: Peter Sibon