KOTA KINABALU: The quick switch of focus in tourism saved the overall total arrivals from further declining after Sabah faced a steep drop in Chinese arrivals in 2014.
The 2014 Sabah tourism report card today revealed that efforts in strengthening other market source were fruitful in arresting the overall tourism decline.
The trend of weakening Chinese arrivals was also seen nation-wide and Sarawak as well as in neighbouring country, Singapore.
Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said there was a -3.7% drop in the overall 2014 tourist arrivals bringing a nett total of 3.065 mil visitors compared to 3.181 mil in 2013, mainly caused by the decrease of Chinese tourists into Sabah.
"However we were quick to shift our dependency on China and move to others, resulting double digit growth on markets such as Japan (+18.3%), overall Europe (+12.4%) and USA (+13.7%),” State Tourism, Culture & Environment Minister," he added.
Other strong arrivals to Sabah were South Korea with a total of 114,240 visitors (increase of +7.6%), UK & Ireland total of 33,578 (+9.1%) and Australia 29,626 (+1.5%). Domestic tourism registered a drop of -2.6% with a total of 2.234 mil compared to 2.293 mil in 2013.