Is tourism in Sarawak well on its way to recovery?

Sarawak is known for its cultural riches such as the Kaul Festival that’s celebrated by the Melanau community. — Sarawak Tourism Board

When tourism activities were halted nearly two years ago due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) took the opportunity to change its marketing strategy during the downtime. This resulted in Sia Sitok Sarawak, an intrastate tourism initiative in 2020.

“If I said the (effect of the) pandemic was not that bad, I would be lying. It hurt us very, very badly,” said STB chief executive officer Sharzede Salleh Askor in an exclusive interview.

“But we took on that challenge, and put our focus on domestic travellers. Since we had issues with travelling interstate, we created this campaign for Sarawakians,” she said.

With a population of 2.9 million (as of 2020), Sarawak has always been one of the most populous states in Malaysia. Promoting intrastate travel was a smart move as it provided some respite for tourism businesses.

The name of the campaign translates to mean “here and there in Sarawak” – and people really did travel around the state. According to Sharzede, the initiative generated revenue for related industries such as hospitality. In a span of one month last year, about 8,000 hotel rooms were booked through the campaign.

If Sia Sitok Sarawak proved anything, it would be the importance of domestic tourists in reviving tourism.

“There’s a demand for the domestic market, but it’s just a matter of developing it. Sarawak is fortunate to have a strong domestic market. Now, we just need to make it stronger during the pandemic and make people more aware of our products,” she said.

Despite its distance from Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak had consistently received high volume of domestic tourists before the pandemic.

The Department of Statistics Malaysia reported that Sarawak had the fifth highest number of domestic tourists in 2019, recording 19.8 million domestic arrivals.

But it’s not difficult to see why domestic tourism works in the state. Renowned for its natural wonders and cultural riches, Sarawak has ample tourism appeal. There is, however a clear distinction in travel preferences among local and international visitors.

Visitors from Peninsular Malaysia tend to have very distinct traits that are different from long-haul travellers, said Sharzede.

Seafood and handicrafts are usually at the top of the list for domestic travellers. Interestingly, cultural tourism is also on the rise among younger Malaysians.

“The young ones from the peninsular love going to long houses. As part of our strategy, we have pushed for community-based tourism where we engage with rural homestay owners to improve their services,” Sharzede said.

STB launched a Responsible Tourism pledge last year to reduce environmental footprint, support local communities and protect culture and heritage.

“Responsible tourism is about you as a host making your destination a great place for visitors. And it’s about making sure that your visitors understand the importance of taking care of the host country.

“It’s a two-way approach. Travellers need to take care of our environment and culture,” she said.

While STB has managed to navigate in a post-lockdown environment, the truth is that the face of travel has changed considerably since the start of Covid-19.

The way people travel now is just different, said Sharzede.

“Whenever possible, people want everything to be contactless. So digitalisation is very important (for tourism operators).

“People are also very concerned with hygiene and crowd management. They want to make sure that wherever they go, the standard operating procedures are there. They (travellers) may be grumbling about wearing masks, but they are still concerned,” Sharzede explained.

Another interesting observation is the timeline of holiday planning.

According to Sharzede, travellers no longer book for a holiday months in advance.

“People don’t plan one month ahead now. They probably plan seven days before a trip because of uncertainties. On our side, we notice that people like to make bookings at the very last minute now,” she said.

Sharzede added that because of this, dynamic pricing will be challenging. Dynamic pricing refers to the process of using data to more accurately segment consumers and automatically offer them differentiated prices based on various factors.

All the observations mean that travel stakeholders would need to evolve to cater to tourists.

“We have to adapt because people are just travelling differently amid all these uncertainties,” she said.

The million dollar question then is: Is tourism in Sarawak well on its way to recovery?

“I would like to say yes, and I’m very confident. With all the activities that we’re doing, we are expediting things.

“I’m confident that if the borders are not restricted and there’s no other (Covid-19 variants) or whatever it is, we can see very clearly the light at the end of the tunnel,” she concluded.