‘Campaign to place state as preferred tourism destination’
MIRI: The Visit Sarawak campaign is envisioned to place Sarawak on the tourism map as one of the preferred tourism destinations in Southeast Asia by offering a lifetime experience to travellers.
Among the objectives of the campaign are to enhance visibility of ‘ Brand Sarawak’ in the international and domestic market, to inculcate into Sarawakians a sense of belonging on tourism attractions in Sarawak and to provide excellent content of tourism services and value for money experiences, Assistant Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Datuk Lee Kim Shin said.
“We are focusing increasingly on responsible tourism as we firmly believe that today’s travellers are becoming more determined in making sure their travels reflect their own personal beliefs, believing that spending time and money in ways that contribute directly to help the local communities.
“Visitors would not settle with just a simple day trip, they want an experience that will resonate with them on a more emotional level, creating a memory that will stay with them forever. With the use of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality ( VR), we have the way of giving potential visitors a glimpse of what Sarawak has to offer, to sell them the dream and once they believe in the dream, they have to come here to see it come true,” he said at the Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) Media Night here on Monday.
According to him, travellers are encouraged to experience the longhouse life by staying with the longhouse folks, being taught to share the experience of longhouse style cooking and sharing the meal they cooked together.
“The responsible and experiential tourism are some of the new ways we would like to share with our visitors, our unique ways and style of life that they may not find elsewhere, but only in Sarawak. And that is what we want them to discover.
“Sarawak targets the arrival of five million visitors to the state in 2019 and we are sure to offer packages that will attract them here,” he said.
Furthermore, Lee said, specialist product experiences like city cycling tours and wilderness or jungle trekking are getting more popular as they certainly reduce traveller’s carbon footprint, making it a way of life and are becoming more popular.
“What we are doing on our part is the need to consistently reduce and reuse our waste and we have been in the forefront in this initiative as in our own event, the Rainforest World Music Festival.
“We recycle and reuse, be it turning our old promotional material sheets into tote bags, or turning food waste into fertiliser,” he said.
Also present at the dinner were STB chief executive officer Sharzede Salleh Askor, local media and STB staff.