Zamboanga schools eye KK as educational tour destination

ZAMBOANGA CITY: The City Tourism Office and a handful of prestigious universities and colleges have expressed their eagerness to work closely with their counterparts in Sabah to further promote the tourism sector in both areas.

City Tourism Officer Sarita Sebastian-Hernandez during a meeting with facilitator Nikko Fabian said that her office together with several schools in the city are looking at promoting both cities through education tourism.

“It has been our noble dream to be able to connect Zamboanga City and some of our local educational institutions with our Sabah counterparts some day through the promotion of education tourism,” she said.

During the meeting, Sarita informed Nikko that her office together with selected school operators will be submitting a detailed proposal letter to Sabahbased Borneo Trails Tours and Travel on the mechanics of the noble project.

“We are seriously looking at injecting international flavour in our yearly five-day educational tour for graduating students as suggested by Nikko...instead of organising domestic educational tour, why not bring our students to Kota Kinabalu”.

“Malaysia is doing good in the tourism industry and the country can be a model to our students. Besides, Sabah is very close to Zamboanga City and bringing our students to Kota Kinabalu will be cheaper than bringing them to Manila,” she added.

Sarita also said several tour and travel operators in the city had expressed their desires to work closely with their Sabah counterparts to effectively and aggressively promote both Kota Kinabalu city and Zamboanga city.

“We believe that this is the right time to turn this dream into reality now that Borneo Trails Tour and Travel is also willing to work with us,” she opined.

Sarita said the attendees during the meeting accepted the invitation of Borneo Trails and Travel Tour to visit Kota Kinabalu in April.

“We will sit down with our Sabah counterpart come April to discuss and exchange ideas on how best to promote both cities,” she said, adding that the Tourism Office of Region 9 had already assured of it full support for the project.

With the existing ZamboangaSandakan weekly ferry service and soon to open ZamboangaKota Kinabalu direct flight, Sarita said bringing students to Kota Kinabalu will be less expensive and above all a truly educational tour.