| James Kon in Singapore |
FROM January to September 2016, there were a total of 3,119,405 international visitors’ arrival to Brunei Darussalam.
The breakdown of the figure shows 2,931,327 visitors by border, 163,023 visitors by air and 25,055 by sea/cruise.
To further spur growth, Brunei Darussalam is continuously strengthening and enhancing its local tourism products to further increase visitors’ arrival into the country.
These figures were revealed by Salinah binti Salleh, the Head of Promotion and Marketing under the Tourism Development Department under the Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism in the press briefing at the Asean Tourism Forum 2017 held in Marina Bay Sands yesterday morning.
“The international arrivals have increased progressively. Over the past eight years of 2007 to 2015, visitor arrivals have shown a compound annual growth rate of 2.54 per cent by air, 5.99 per cent by cruise and 9.76 per cent by border,” she said.
Touching on opportunities, she expressed that it’s a very exciting year and a lot of charter flights are coming to Brunei and has expressed interest to fly to Brunei.
She cited a number of charter flights namely from Zhengzhou to Brunei as of July 5, 2016 and from Seoul to Brunei as of December last year. Charter flights from Xian is taking place this year to open up the China market to Brunei Darussalam while Royal Brunei Airlines (RB) code shares with Turkish Airlines, China Eastern Airlines and Hong Kong Airlines has increase connectivity to Brunei.
Salinah binti Salleh, the Head of Promotion and Marketing under the Tourism Development Department under the Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism. – JAMES KON
She highlighted that travel guides in Brunei are undergoing training to obtain proper licence therefore the ministry is encouraging travel guides to come forward to join the training, which is conducted with a private educational institution in the country.
Salinah also gave updates on the ease of visa facilitation like visa on arrival for China as well as visa-free for Turkey and the introduction of meter taxis in July last year enhancing public transportation.
“We have also repackaged our tourism products. The core tour products of Brunei that we have are Temburong, Kampong Ayer and Bandar Seri Begawan and as of last year, we have repackaged popular tourism spots so that tourists can get better overviews of what is available in the country,” she added.
In addition, she explained about educational tourism where visitors can enjoy numerous eco-tourism activities while schools also help to cater for the international market.
Last year, Jerudong International School (JIS) hosted summer camp packages welcoming students from around the world to Brunei.
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