Sabah Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Datuk Christina Liew is targeting tourist arrivals in Sabah, Malaysia, to reach 2.8 million by 2024.
“Our target is 2.8 million visits,” she said when met in Kinabalu on Wednesday.
The target was set reflecting on the achievement of tourist visits to Sabah last year which was able to exceed the target of 2.3 million tourist visits, while the achievement was 2.5 million visits.
Moreover, he continued, there is an additional AirAsia flight route from Jakarta-Kinabalu so that it is believed to be able to achieve the target of tourist visits in 2024.
“But we are sure it will also exceed. And of course the direct flight from Jakarta to Kota Kinabalu can help achieve that goal,” he also said.
As for tourist arrivals from Indonesia, he said Indonesia was in the top three visitors to Sabah with approximately 70,000 visits in 2023.
Meanwhile, another country that dominates is tourists from South Korea.
“Last year from South Korea (dominated visits to Sabah), from South Korea alone we have more than 50 direct flights from there. So that means great potential,” he added.
In addition to opening the Jakarta-Kinabalu route, he also hopes that there will be new flights from other cities such as Indonesia to Sabah, including from Bali.
It is known, Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy (Menparekraf) Sandiaga Salahuddin Uno said, based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the achievement of foreign tourist visits in October 2023 was dominated by visits from Malaysia.
“Who visited Indonesia? Malaysia 14.16 percent, Australia 13.18 percent, Singapore 9.1 percent, China 7.7 percent and Timor Leste 6.02 percent,” Sandiaga said.