KUCHING: As of September, this year, homestays in Sarawak have managed to generate a total income of RM3,632,811.90.
“Our target is RM4.5 million for this year,” said Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry deputy secretary-general Saraya Arbi when met at the Homestay Conference Carnival 2019 held at Plaza Merdeka here, yesterday.
She revealed that Sarawak has the highest number of homestays — 43 clusters with a total of 950 rooms, involving 620 entrepreneurs altogether.
“We have recorded a total of 47,871 visitors staying at homestays in Sarawak as of Sept 2019. Of this number, 7,011 are foreign tourists while 40,860 are domestic visitors,” she said, further commenting that these were good statistics.
Saraya clarified that the term ‘homestay’ refers to not just one house, but a cluster of at least about ten houses forming one homestay.
“Some of the participants were asking how to develop a homestay, so we can see that there is a desire among the community and potential to increase the number of homestays in Sarawak,” she said.
She believed that these homestay efforts could be linked to two of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “First is related to community economy development and the second is in terms of elevating the way of life.”
Meanwhile, the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry director Suriya Charles Buas pointed out that the key challenges faced by homestays in the state are communication and infrastructure.
“It is difficult for those in the rural areas to promote their homestay programmes and packages digitally,” he said, adding that homestay programmes help to achieve targets in tourism.
“The target for tourism in Sarawak is five million visitors and an income of RM8 billion to RM10 billion. For the entire nation, the target is 30 million visitors and an income of RM100 billion,” he revealed.
He added that as the carnival enters its fourth year, it acts as a meeting session between homestay owners.
“Another objective is to act as a platform for business-to-business (B2B) networking between homestay entrepreneurs and government agencies and departments — such as tourism agencies,” he stated.
He also pointed out that the carnival has allowed homestays to promote products from their respective areas.
“They also get the opportunity to engage experts who are presenting talks during the conference.”
The carnival, which began on Friday (Nov 1), will end today (Nov 3).
