Industry seen to downsize next year with likely recovery in 2010
THE number of tourists entering via the Brunei International Airport is expected to break the 200,000 mark by the end of this year, according to the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Brunei Tourism Board.
Speaking to The Brunei Times yesterday, Sheikh Jamaluddin Sheikh Mohamed said that the first half of 2008 saw the arrival of approximately 145,000 visitors and this figure did not include tourists who entered Brunei via other checkpoints.
He said this was a "wonderful" result as it was not far from the 2007 figure, where 178,000 visitors were recorded.
The tourism board is currently in the process of accumulating and assessing the data before the actual figure can be concluded.
Last year, there was a 12.9 per cent rise in foreign visitors to the Sultanate, surpassing the original target of seven per cent growth.
This achievement has prompted the doubling of this year's target to an ambitious 14 per cent, which the CEO is confident of accomplishing.
In an interview with The Report Brunei Darussalam 2008 published by Oxford Business Group, Sheikh Jamaluddin was quoted to have said, "In 2008, we (Brunei Tourism) would ideally like to see about 220,000 and we do not consider this to be an unrealistic target."
Sheikh Jamaluddin was one of the participants of the 33rd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Tourism Working Group (TWG) Meeting, which the Sultanate recently hosted at the Rizqun International Hotel.
During the meeting, the participants agreed that due to the current global financial crisis and drop of currency values, the tourism industry could see a slump in the next three quarters.
"We could see a downsize in travelling patterns over the next year," said Sheikh Jamaluddin.
He added that the industry was likely to recover by 2010.
With regards to Brunei's own tourism industry, he expected a "slowdown" for the final three months of this year. He shared that a charter group from Korea, comprising an estimated 2,000 visitors, had recently cancelled their trip to Brunei.
He explained that people were less likely to travel due to issues in job security in light of the global crisis.
Despite this, the CEO remained optimistic that the Sultanate would meet this year's target. Earlier in April, a group of some 5,000 Koreans visited Brunei for golf and tourism.
From the Apec TWG meeting, Sheikh Jamaluddin said that Brunei could look into the tourism strategies of other Apec member economies.
One of these strategies, which drew particular interest was community-based tourism. The CEO explained that the strategy called for the involvement of the whole community, where the population also participated in welcoming and entertaining foreign guests.
Yesterday, some 30 delegates of the TWG meeting took a technical tour around the capital.
They visited various landmarks such as the Royal Regalia, Jame' Asr Hassanil Bolkiah and Kg Ayer.
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