Pangkor island is the most popular destination for tourists during the current Visit Perak Year 2012 campaign recording close to one million visitors as of September, said State Tourism Committee chairman Datuk Hamidah Osman.
Although she had yet to receive the official statistics from an initial survey by Tourism Perak, she said the influx of foreign and local tourists into Pangkor and the state had definitely increased.
“The Lenggong Valley, being bestowed the World Heritage Site status by Unesco, had also helped increase the influx of visitors to the state. “The Gallery Lenggong has seen a 100% increase in visitor count. “We used to have about 2,000 every month and we are recording between 4,000 and 5,000 visitors currently,” said Hamidah.
Ferry operators from Lumut to Pangkor, however, complained that their services had to be disrupted at times during peak season as they were unable to cope with the rising number of tourists.
Mesra Feri Sdn Bhd manager Yu Kar Cheong suggested that the jetty at the Lumut Waterfront to be expanded to accommodate more ferries as currently only three ferries could dock at the jetty at a time. “During peak season, we can have about 6,000 tourists going in and out of Pangkor. Due to the large crowd, visitors have to wait for long hours to board,” he said.
Yu also said as the hotel check-out time was between noon and 2pm, most tourists opting to leave later could come to a bottleneck situation at the Pangkor jetty, causing long queues and delays. Each ferry could carry up to 150 passengers in 22 trips daily on normal days.
“We will have 40 trips during peak seasons, which include weekends and public holidays to accommodate the large number of tourists,” he said. Yu added that three ferry operators at Lumut had banded together and currently have a total of 15 ferries in their stable.
On the Visit Perak Year programme, Hamidah said it would not stop at the end of December but would continue in conjunction with Visit Malaysia Year next year. She added that this year’s programme was akin to an awareness programme to promote Perak to the world and noted that the state had taken several aggressive promotional methods.
“We have a series of television programmes aired on TV9 to showcase tourism spots in Perak every Saturday at 11am.
“A contingent from the state will also travel to Singapore for promotional works from Nov 2 to 4. “They will also travel to London for the World Travel Mart in the same month,” she said.
-thestar online.
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