Published on : Friday, January 18, 2019
The initiation is to further branch out its tourism that was highly reliant on the prosperous tourist market of China, said Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Christina Liew (pic).
Liew, who is state Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister, stated that it was crucial to balance out the tourism market by supporting more western tourists to visit the state.
“We will kick off our campaign to promote Sabah to other countries, starting with Germany in March.
“I will be leading a delegation to Berlin first and we will be visiting other European countries as well,” Liew informed the reporters on Thursday (Jan 17) after declaring that the state government’s Chinese New Year open house would be organized on Feb 5 in the Hakka Hall here.
“We are targeting more Europeans as we want to balance the numbers, not only increasing the number of Chinese tourists, but also American, European and Australian tourists, as well as those from Malaysia,” she said.
Liew was quite sure that Sabah was in the right position to attract in European tourists as there was connectivity with Royal Brunei Airlines and China Southern Airlines flying direct to Sabah.
She said while ignoring claims that there was a decline in Chinese tourist arrivals in Sabah, more than 500,000 tourists from China had visited Sabah in 2018, which surpassed the target.
Tags: european tourists, sabah