Fruitful visit to San Francisco: Masidi

KOTA KINABALU: Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun on Wednesday concluded his trip to San Francisco confident the attempt to woo tourists from the United States would yield results.

“We had a first meeting with their tourist agents there. It was more of a explanatory session, which went very, very well,” he told the Daily Express, here.

The move marks the Sabah’s foray into the American tourism market, involving a three-way meeting between Masidi’s delegation, travel agents from San Francisco, and an Asiana Air regional manager.

In the meeting, he said they also put up suggestions to improve and ease connectivity for travel from San Francisco to Kota Kinabalu via Aseana.

Masidi said their work was further made easy after realising there is a Malaysian-born amid the group of travel agents who is well versed on Sabah.

“That would be an advantage for us at least in terms of promoting Sabah,” said Masidi, adding that Sabah Tourism Board will provide the necessary aid once the group of visitors from San Francisco starts to come in.

On Sept 15, Masidi announced the trip to San Francisco to woo visitors from the Pacific Coast of America, in what he said was a change of strategy away from the traditional Chinese market.

He made his trip on Sept 25 and returned to Kota Kinabalu on Oct 2, which included a stop at the City of Portland where he witnessed a memorandum signing between Kota Kinabalu and Portland as sister cities.

Masidi had warned of the significant drop in Chinese national arrivals following jitters brought on by security concerns in the East Coast and the disappearance of MH370.

Sabah experienced a 47 per cent drop in the number of arrivals from China in the first six months of 2014 compared to the same period last year.

Source: Daily Express