KUCHING: Tourism was never in the minds of our founding fathers as is seen in the constitution until a unilateral insertion into the “concurrent list” by the federal government in 1994.
Up till the ’94 insertion which was done without the consent of the Sarawak government, tourism was never in the minds of the administration be it at the federal or state levels and our country was already far lagging behind Thailand and Bali in Indonesia as well as Singapore.
Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah (pic) was explaining the late entry of Sarawak into the tourism arena along with its promotion, which he estimated began not more than 25 years ago.
“I feel honoured to be here in this forum which aims to advance the state tourism and hospitality industry especially in the aspects of innovation and technology.
“This forum is also good because it provides practical guidance in developing a smart tourism and hospitality industry,” said Karim during the opening of “Smart Tourism, Smart Destination Forum 2019” jointly organised by UCSI University, Sarawak Research Society (SRS) and Radience Tourism Mixer (RTM) of Taiwan.
The minister also thanked the organisers for being committed in playing their part in realising the initiatives and directions of the state government pertaining to the Digital Economy and further development of tourism and hospitality sectors.
“Sarawak is still facing various challenges in getting potential tourists to come and spend their holidays here simply because of air connectivity and accessibility issues.
“This is among the perennial issues but we cannot give up and must work together to find the best solutions and approaches.”
Karim also revealed that the state government was keen on hosting and organising more events as part of the strategy to promote the state as a tourism destination.
“What we will do now is to maintain a campaign for as long as it remains relevant. We don’t want any wastage just because we put a year in the slogan and it can’t be used come Jan 2020. Our thrust will be event-based so as to capture as many markets as possible whilst solving the connectivity issue.”
Before concluding the event, Karim joked that “This is the RTM that we will be looking forward to working with in the future,” alluding to Deniel Cheng, the keynote speaker and founder of RTM – international public relations company with access to tourists from the Taiwan and Chinese markets.
Meanwhile, the social media platform called WeChat was present at the forum and explained ways and means that companies and individuals here could use the platform to engage the East Asian markets which includes Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China.
