LABUAN: Labuan has set a target of one million tourists or visitor arrivals to this duty-free island by the end of next year in conjunction with the Visit Malaysia Year 2014.
Director of Labuan Arts and Tourism Ministry Office, Faruzrahidzah Kassim, said yesterday that they have planned several events to be held next year to attract the visitors here.
“We support Labuan member of parliament Rozman Isli’s aspiration to organise quality events to make this island as a well-known sporting hub. One of the challenges we will face is how to attract visitors to come here during the holiday season, as many of the people here will go out from this island. We need visitors from outside Labuan to come here,” she said.
Faruzrahidzah also said that the Third Tourism Sport Carnival that ended yesterday had been adjusted for better participation. She explained that the sport carnival last year was more on recreational sports and confined mostly to local participation only, while, this year it was more extensive and was open to outsiders.
“Three additional new events held this year were the Strongest Man, Dodgeball and the under-14 football tournament. Another event organised this year was hand-wrestling that was also included last year. For this year, there are only four events organised compared to six last year. Why we have opened participation in the games to outsiders this year is because many were eager to join in the games last year,” she said.
One of the participants in the Strongest Man event from Kota Kinabalu, Mohd Faizal Sumardi, said this was the first time that the event, which was a new one, was held in Labuan.
“The event used to be organised only in Kota Kinabalu but it was a good event to hold here as it will attract the locals’ interest to participate in it,” he said.
Among the participants who took part in the carnival were from Labuan, Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak.