Islands among top Sabah attractions
A domestic outbound survey conducted in 2018 indicates that there are still plenty of opportunities to grow the domestic market in Sabah, with islands among five attractions.
KOTA KINABALU: A domestic outbound survey conducted in 2018 indicates that there are still plenty of opportunities to grow the domestic market in Sabah despite yearly increment of the market for the last two decades.
In 2018, domestic arrivals went up 2.8%, or a total of 2.518 million, bringing a monthly average of 209,000 visitors compared to the year before.
“To date, 442 flights connect Kota Kinabalu, Tawau and Sandakan to nine Malaysian cities weekly.
The survey, conducted by the Research Division of Sabah Tourism Board (STB) reveals that the top five preferred holiday activities for domestic travellers were viewing natural scenery (71.1%), relaxing by the beach/pool (54.4%), visiting local markets (54.4%), visiting famous landmarks (52%) and island/ snorkelling (41.5%).
“Sabah has all the right ingredients of a holiday destination for domestic travellers.
“Although the domestic market is our biggest market source, we believe that there are still many that have never been to Sabah or East Malaysia in general,” said general manager of STB, Suzaini Datuk Sabdin Ghani.
The participants further indicated that some of them who may or may not have visited Sabah before, are making plans to visit Sabah in the future, namely to Kota Kinabalu (increased from 29.6% to 85.7%), Sandakan (7.8% to 33%) and Tawau (6.3% to 23.1%).
As for source of information, 17.1% of the participants get information from friends and family, 26.7% online and 33.1% from travel fairs.
“Matta Fair will be a great platform to explore these opportunities further with domestic visitors. Sabah is pushing community-based tourism especially to rural areas, as well as homestay and camping which have shown to be an area of interest among domestic travellers who prefer self-driving to traveling in groups,"Suzaini added.
The Matta Fair next week will feature Sabah as Malaysia's favourite destination.
STB will lead Sabah's delegation of 30 co-exhibitors comprising 25 tour operators, two dive operators, two hotels and one hotel association.
Nature-based products in the East Coast and the much-loved Mount Kinabalu hike and islands are expected to be the main attractions during the fair.