| James Kon |
TOURIST arrivals from China into the country via Brunei International Airport has been significantly increasing year on year.
The East Asian nation has emerged as a top 10 market for tourist arrivals for Brunei Darussalam in recent years. In 2016, Brunei Darussalam received 40,838 tourists from China, while in 2017 alone this figure increased to 52,391.
This sharp jump in tourist numbers is due, in large part, to the introduction of chartered flights to Brunei from Kunming and Nanning since 2017.
This year, Brunei Darussalam is receiving twice-a-week (Wednesday and Sunday) chartered flights from Kunming, while scheduled flights by Royal Brunei Airlines (RB) to and from Nanning are also being run.
The growing number of Chinese tourists visiting Brunei Darussalam was highlighted by Deputy Permanent Secretary (Tourism) at the Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism Wardi bin Haji Mohammad Ali, the guest of honour at the opening ceremony of the ‘Chinese Language Training for Chinese Tour Guide Teachers’ at Laksamana College of Business (LCB).
He hoped that “this number will continue to rise both through chartered flights and frequent travellers (FITs)”.
On recent developments with regard to chartered flight tourists, especially from South Korea and China, Wardi added, “We need to keep on finding ways to improve our services to these tourists. Like other tourists, we want them to feel welcomed, comfortable, safe and excited right from the moment they check in at the check-in counters overseas, board the planes, arrive at our airport, get the coaches to their hotels, check in at the hotels, visit the tourist attractions and enjoy the various activities while in the country, right up to the point when they check out of their hotels and head back to the airport and hop on the plane back to their countries.”
“Brunei’s well-preserved nature, low crime rate, peacefulness, tranquility and clean environment makes it a popular destination,” the Deputy Permanent Secretary said.
“The ministry’s vision is to significantly increase the number of tourists visiting Brunei Darussalam from 218,000 in 2015 to 450,000 tourists by 2020, and our mission is to strengthen our tourism products and improve the quality of the tourism services,” he said.
“Our other objectives are to increase the tourists’ length of stay, to see repeat visitors to Brunei, to see high quality and high-income tourists. We believe that achieving all these objectives can help in increasing tourism contribution to our GDP.”
Commenting on the ‘Chinese Language Training for Chinese Tour Guide Teachers’, he noted that the training is the first flagship project in tourism between Brunei and the ASEAN-China Centre.
The three-day programme seeks to improve the participants’ Chinese Language proficiency and guiding techniques when dealing with Chinese tourists, and is anticipated to open up job opportunities for the local youth who have attended it.