Tourism Chief Wants More Visitors To Stay Longer
By James Kon

Bandar Seri Begawan - An estimated 100,000 tourists visited Brunei Darussalam last year with an average stay of three nights in the country.

This figure was released at a press conference held by the Director of Brunei Tourism Unit of Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources, Sheikh Jamaluddin Bin Sheikh Mohammad, yesterday.

Immigration statistics showed that Brunei received more than one million visitors yearly since 2000 but the figure did not show how the visitors directly contributed to the economy by staying in hotels and using tourism-related services.

Therefore, the Tourism Unit had to collect its own information through tour operators as well as hotels to get the estimated figures.

These figures will be used as a basis for future projections and objectives as well as to calculate future expected revenue and hotel occupancy rates.

Sheikh Jamaluddin said that the Tourism Unit is targeting 7% to 15 % growth in to wrist arrivals in the coming years.

By 2010, the industry hopes to increase tourist arrivals to 250,000 who stay an average of 4 nights which will raise hotel occupancy rates to above 70%, create foreign exchange earning of $170 million and 10,000 to 12,000 tourism-related jobs, not counting the multiply effects of tourism dollars.

This year in January alone, more than 3,000 tourists from China, Korea and Japan visited Brunei.

And hopefully the momentum will continue throughout the year.

Sheikh Jamaluddin hoped that the spread of bird flu in the region will not affect Brunei.

On the promotional side, Brunei will be taking part in the Asean Tourism Forum followed by Melbourne, Australia for the AIMS, incentive exhibition and others.  -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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