Efforts to restart tourism
Published on: Thursday, May 28, 2020
By: Larry Ralon
Kota Kinabalu: The Government is looking at allowing outdoor tourism-related activities like trekking, mountain climbing, scuba diving and so on to resume first, while waiting for the re-activation of the whole tourism industry which is expected to start at the end of this year.Deputy Tourism, Art and Culture Minister Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan (pic) said allowing such tourism-related activities will be able to help in the recovery of the whole industry, which is expected to resume slowly or phase by phase, depending the global Covid-19 situation.
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“Tourism activities can first resume within the green zones (no Covid-19 cases) and tourism-related travelling between the green zones,” he told reporters after attending a closed-door briefing on the Sabah tourism industry at the Tourism, Art and Culture Ministry (Motac) Sabah office in Wawasan Plaza, here, Wednesday.
Dr Jeffrey said the tourism sector in Sabah is as badly affected by the pandemic as in the peninsula and the rest of the country.
“In fact, it is worse because Sabah is dependent on foreign tourists. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, Sabah had been receiving the largest number of foreign tourists from China. As you know, China had been in a lockdown and all the other countries also, it will take some time before the industry can be revived.
“Well, how long (it will take for the industry to recover) will depend on what is our assumption, as there are people who say that the vaccine will not be found so soon and that we will have to live with the virus for a long, long time.
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“If that is the case, then we have to live with a situation and make adjustments on how we will revive the industry…we have to come up with ways to make sure the tourism industry in the State doesn’t ‘die’.
“There are efforts underway to find the vaccine and I hope the shortest will be that we will start the recovery and re-activating our tourism industry by the end of the year, starting with domestic tourism before moving on to regional and global tourism.
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“We are hoping that the start of the recovery will be at end of this year and we are now looking for ways on how to do it,” he said.
Dr Jeffrey said one of the suggestions made is that the Government does it by looking at the affected areas, like travelling between green zones.
“We understand we cannot do that for the red zones, but travelling between green zones will be okay because we can have standard operating procedures (SOPs) for that.
“By doing that, we can restart the tourism business so that the industry will slowly recover. Then we have to look at the sub-sectors such as rural tourism like for example, Mount Kinabalu, why don’t we allow Kinabalu Park to be opened for climbers.
“Jungle trekking is also a healthy activity which is done in an open space. And the same with scuba diving. So some of these activities can be started without waiting for the whole lockdown to be over.
“We want this, if can, as soon as possible, not until our industry die,” he said.
Asked on measures by the Federal Government to help the State tourism industry, Dr Jeffrey said the Federal Government is doing what it can to assist the industry in Sabah as well as other parts of Malaysia.
“That’s why I am here to listen and to talk to the industry, the State Tourism, Culture and Environment Ministry and so on, so that we can help each other,” he said.
He added that the Federal Government does not discriminate between the peninsula, Sarawak and Sabah as it looks at the industry as a whole.
On any specific assistance for the Sabah tourism industry, he said there will be an announcement soon, so let’s wait for the Federal Government to announce it.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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