KOTA KINABALU: Sabah tourism industry has not deteriorated by beyond the state’s control abductions in the East Coast thus far, revealed Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun.
The minister emphasized “there is no such thing as zero risk in any place in the world” and arrivals into Sabah had been maintained by far and large.
“Among the 16 most dangerous cities in the world, six are in Brazil, yet people are still flocking to the country. So my opinion is that while I want to believe that safety is the paramount consideration but you must remember that incident is beyond our own control.
“For instance, you take for example explosion in France, or even in Belgium or even the shooting in America, I don’t think we are going to say that we should now not go to America because people have died.
“I don’t think that any country or anyone can guarantee that their place is perfectly safe, we just have to reasonably take all action that is humanly possible to ensure safety but eventually there are things beyond our control,” he elaborated.
Masidi said most countries issued reminders to travellers regarding the safety level of their destination.
“Our hope is that, when travel warnings are issued by foreign countries, they must remember that Sabah is not a small state.
“Sometimes there are those who misunderstand when there is a warning to be cautious, even recommendation not to travel to Sabah because of the east coast incident, they assume all of Sabah is not safe.
“Kota Kinabalu is still safe, the West Coast is safe. I think we prefer that the travel warnings be more specific of the location,” he added.
The minister said the first quarter of 2016 had indicated a strong 4.4% growth in the overall tourism arrivals into Sabah.
This could be due to Sabah’s largest international arrivals contributor to Sabah, namely the 54% of Northern Asia (China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan) arrivals, he added.
According to Masidi, in comparison to the first quarter of 2015, the January to April 2016 figures had seen a massive 55.8% increase from 75,451 to 117,569.
The 64 weekly flights coming into Sabah, which established better connectivity between the country and Sabah contributed to the increase.
Within the same period, the Korean arrivals grew by 32.4% from 47,777 people to 63,258 whilst the Taiwan arrivals increased by 34.8% from 11,948 to 16,103.
Even with the once a week Perth-Kota Kinabalu Malaysia Airlines flight, the number of Australian tourists saw an increase of nearly 4% compared to last year’s, the minister added.
“We like to believe that we can work with any airline in the world. When it comes to our tourism industry we will work with any airline to make sure there are more arrivals into Sabah,” Masidi emphasized earlier during the Jeju Air inauguration press conference held at Sabah Tourism Board building here on Thursday.
Kota Kinabalu receives direct flights from 16 international destinations with 154 international flights weekly, and 381 domestic flights per week, which excludes domestic routes within Sabah itself, he explained.
Meanwhile, the 2015 international flights average load factor was 65.4%. and 75.8% up to April this year.
The domestic average load factor last year was 68% and this year the number increased to 73%.