KUCHING: Sarawak has been earmarked as among the destinations that the Philippines is looking to increase its flight connectivity to, as the nation of thousand islands sets to boost its tourism industry within the South East Asian (SEA) region.
The Philippines Secretary of Tourism Ramon R Jimenez Jr hinted that more direct routes could be established with the state within the next few years. Last December, Manila opened its first direct route with Sarawak through Miri,
the state’s second largest city located at its northern region.
“Increasing connectivity is among the factors that the Philippines is looking into, to boost tourism with Sarawak and other SEA countries.
“Sarawak provides a good bearing for many cities in the Philippines. We only declared our ‘pocket’ open skies policy in 2011, so it is still early. But in theory, we would be able to fly directly to Sarawak from Cebu or vice-versa within these next three years,” the 58-year-old former advertising guru told The Borneo Post when met at Pullman Hotel here Monday.
Cebu is one of the country’s thriving tourism hubs which has a direct route to Kuala Lumpur and most recently Kota Kinabalu (Sabah) launched last Dec 19.
Jimenez added that last year, the Philippines recorded 4.7 million tourist arrivals, of which 98 per cent arrived by air. He also mentioned that 48 per cent of the arrivals were from Malaysia – being the most significant among other Asian countries over the past two years in terms of growth.
Appointed as Secretary of Tourism in September 2011, Jimenez deemed the growth rate as phenomenal.
On other collaborations that the Philippines looked forward to in establishing with Sarawak in its bid to boost the tourism industry of both countries (Malaysia), he added that his government was in the process of putting together twinning programmes that would allow each country to market not only its own destinations but a companion destination in other countries.
He explained that Malaysia, including other Asean member countries, must be each other’s best sources of business to accelerate the exchange within the region.
“If we want to invite the rest of the world to South East Asia, we can’t do it ourselves. If you look at the statistics, the growth rate is not an accident. It is a result of our cooperation.
“Look at it this way, we are banking on the idea that every time a tourist comes to Malaysia (for instance), they might want to go to the Philippines or Brunei or Laos (since they are already in South East Asia). You discovered one part of Asia, you will want to discover the rest of it. We are going by that principle,” he pointed out.
Jimenez was in the city to attend the 17th Meeting of Asean Tourism Ministers and the 13th Meeting of Asean Plus Three (China, Japan and Republic of Korea) Tourism Ministers at the Asean Tourism Forum 2014.