Minister encouraged by 10-fold rise in number of visitors to Sarawak

KUCHING: Sarawak recorded total visitor arrivals of 897,903 from January to August this year, reflecting close to a 10-fold increase over the 82,778 registered in the same period last year.

This was stated by the state Minister of Tourism, Creative Industry and Performing Arts Dato Sri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah during a press conference at Bangunan Baitulmakmur II in Petra Jaya here yesterday.

“As for foreigners, we recorded 206,328 arrivals from January to August this year, versus 14,205 arrivals registered in the same period last year.

“The arrivals from Brunei and Singapore in the same period this year were 46,255 visitors and 12,984 visitors, respectively, representing drastic increases (over the numbers) from last year,” he said.

The January-August 2022 data from his ministry also revealed that Sarawak had collected RM2.12 billion in tourism receipts during the eight months, compared with RM192.31 million recorded in the same period last year.

In August alone this year, said Abdul Karim, there were 194,012 visitor arrivals versus the 8,825 registered last year.

“(From the total visitors in August 2022) 78,880 of them were foreigners.

“The tourism receipts collected for the month amounted to RM476.99 million.

Moreover, Abdul Karim said October would be a busy month for Sarawak in that it would host many major events including the International Kuching Marathon set to gather around 10,000 runners, Kuching Jazz Festival, Borneo Trail Classic with about 2,000 participants and What About Kuching (WAK) programme with over 600 other activities planned.

He also highlighted the Global Muslim Business Forum 2022 to take place at Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) next month.