A businessman has accused the Tourism Ministry of exaggerating the numbers of tourist arrivals in Sabah.
KOTA KINABALU: The Tourism Ministry’s projection of 3.7 million expected tourist arrivals in Sabah this year is ‘very misleading and highly exaggerated’, claims a businessman involved in the Sabah tourism industry.
Tham Yau Kong, the proprietor of an inbound tour company in Sabah, said that the figures were unrealistic.
“If 3.7 million tourists arrive in Sabah in one year, that means 308,000 arrive every month, or 10,277 everyday. There is no such thing! In fact it’s quite impossible!” Tham told FMT.
Asked how the government had come up with such figures, Tham said that the Tourism Ministry had recorded the number of people leaving and re-entering Sabah within one month.
He said many of these ‘tourists’ were immigrants, who used the sea ports in the east coast and traveled into and out of Sabah many times a month doing all sorts of businesses in Indonesia and the Philippines.
“If an immigrant goes out and returns 10 times in a month, he is recorded as 10 tourist arrivals.. And there are hundreds of them doing this all the time,” he said.
Tham said there was also the instances of foreigners literally living in Sabah on tourist visas.
“We must also understand that there is high traffic of foreigners on visit passes who have to leave the state every few months, and they simply make the short trip to Brunei to get their passports chopped (stamped) and come back immediately.
“These too are wrongly counted as tourists,” said Tham.
He also cited the cases of visiting Peninsular Malaysians and Sarawakians who are required to fill up arrival forms.
He said such visitors arrived and returned from Sabah several times per month and they too were counted repeatedly as different tourists.
“The real tourists come to Sabah normally during the tourist season which is from April to October,” he explained.
“And it is during this season that we hear of Kota Kinabalu not having enough hotel rooms. But for the rest of the year many hotels in fact face low occupancy problem.”
He said a more realistic figure would be about 40 percent less than that given by the state government.
it's not impossible to achieve the figures and it's not necessarily they come 10+++ everyday..
ReplyDeletefor me, the most important is, how much the tourists spent in this state, not they number..
ReplyDeleteI don't think the the ministry of tourism have it wrong. The root of the problem is within the data classification via airport entry and participating ticketing or airline agency.
ReplyDeleteThe data obtained are based on the MASB, Immigration Dept, Sabah/Air Asia records. Then it is prepared By Research Division For Sabah Tourism.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, there is still room for improvement for the data gathering method from each respective department or corporations that deals with the recording of tourist entry and exit from Sabah
ReplyDeleteHope they will correct it again and let us have the real answer.
Deletethe State government would strive to speed up the setting up of a tourist information centre here as part of the effort to promote the district
ReplyDeleteMaybe there is miscalculation.
ReplyDeletePromisi harus dibuat agar lebih banyak golongan berkenal dengan Sabah dan sanggup melancong.
ReplyDeleteHope they can come here to spend.
ReplyDeleteIndustri pelancongan merupakan punca pendapatan yang amat penting untuk Sabah.
ReplyDeleteSabah adalah destinasi pelancongan yg amat menarik, sabah tahun jumla pelancong semakin meningkat, ia pasti akan terus meningkat.
ReplyDeleteMungkin bulan-bulan tertentu yang ramai pelancong datang. Bukannya setiap hari 10,277orang.
ReplyDeleteSedangkan pada tahun 2011, kehadiran pelancong sudah mencecah 2.5 juta.. Pelancong antarabangsa berjumlah 795,953 orang, manakala pelancong tempatan pula berjumlah 1,708,716 orang..Jadi ini sudah kelihatan tidak mustahil pertambahan pada tahun 2012 nanti. Memang mustahil untuk dipercayai tapi itulah yang kebenarannya.
ReplyDelete