The Sarawak Economic Development Corporation (SEDC) sees the pandemic as a blessing in disguise as it has steered the tourism industry to relook their products and develop them to benefit their business. 

After the number of visitors dropped drastically to just 4 or 5 persons a day, the tourism decision had to come up with innovate ways to boost revenue. To generate income the Sarawak Cultural Village (SCV) in Santubong is planting local vegetables and herbs to introduce new tourism packages and undertake food deliveries.

The SEDC Tourism and Hospitality division manager, Mark Ferguson told Bernama in an interview recently, “We are doing our best to sustain the business while keeping our staff number intact during this very difficult time. While we expect international travellers to return soon, we have to focus on domestic travellers in the meantime".

“The market will continuously be threatened by the pandemic and development of new technologies,” he said, adding that SEDC hotels’ occupancy rate had also dropped to below 10 per cent due to pandemic fears.

“However, our resort has benefited in some way from local tourists, especially during weekends. We hope to capitalise on local tourism as conditional movement control order (CMCO) ended in the Kuching district,” he said.

“SEDC is expected to invest substantially to develop the Damai Peninsular into a major tourist destination, based on the tourism masterplan to develop the location with new attractions and other development initiatives,” he added.