Kota Kinabalu: Sabah Association of Tour and Travel Agents (Satta) Chairman Datuk Seri Winston Liaw cautioned against high expectations for tourist arrivals from China to be better than the best times of the pre-Covid pandemic years.
“The economic situation in China and the disposal incomes of the Chinese there have been affected by the pandemic, coupled with the fact that airfares within China and overseas have doubled.
“This will affect the number of tourists arriving from China for this year, and it may take time to recover. There are small groups of business people who arrived in Sabah and tourists seen, including in popular tourism places like Semporna, but not many,” Liaw said.
He noted that the Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China has yet to issue visas for Malaysians and others to travel to China, thus affecting the viability of chartered flights between China and Malaysia that hinge on reciprocal loads of China and Malaysian tourists on such flights in order to make profit.
Liaw who has more than two decades of experience organising chartered flights and responsible to bring in many tourists to Sabah, is to open his Sarawak’s Kuching branch of his travel agency which he entrusted the daily operations to his son, intends to resume his tourism promotion in the Land of the Hornbills.
He is happy with working relationship with the Federal Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Dato Sri Tiong King Sing, who is from Sarawak, and Sabah’s Datuk Christina Liew, there is much to do to promote tourism in Sabah and Sarawak with needed improvements to infrastructure, services and products, as other destinations are also marketing their attractions aggressively.
Liaw said Air Asia’s direct flight between Kota Kinabalu and Bangkok may cease after March 17, as not many from Thailand are coming to visit Sabah, and the load factor highly dependent on Sabah visitors to fly to Bangkok is not viable for the airline.
He said most of the Westerners or Caucasian tourists came through Singapore, rather than Bangkok, a favourite destination of such tourists.
The Satta Chairman regretted incidents of prudish enforcement actions taken against concerts, nightspot and accommodation pleasures that are unheard of in other capital cities in this region that offer more vibrant entertainments not available locally that setback local attractiveness for tourism with locals even subject to denial of government services for wearing short pants or dress etc.
He said industry players are desirous of high value tourism that include medical tourism, and eschew low-cost mass tourism, but must face market reality as the tourism industry that is best positioned to boost the local economy expeditiously takes time to cover and to attract the return of quality tourists.
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