Lada Works To Have Langkawi Retain Geopark Status

LANGKAWI, Aug 14 (Bernama) -- The Langkawi Development Authority (Lada) is doing all that it takes for Langkawi to retain its geopark status and develop into one of the world's most important tourism destinations.

Its chief executive officer, Tan Sri Khalid Ramli, said Lada had planned many activities to accommodate Unesco's recommendations so that Langkawi would continue to enjoy the geopark status accorded to the island in 2007.

"I have a list of things we want to do ... education, awareness. We will have a big carnival on geopark besides the Asian Birds Conference in November ... there are 240 (species of) birds in Langkawi," he told reporters here Thursday.

"It depends on Unesco. We received the geopark status in 2007. A validation is done every four years. Unesco did the first validation in 2011. They looked at many things and made many suggestions for improvement, such as signages and conservation strategies.

"Despite all those suggestions to improve, they gave us the green card. If we do not do all that, when they do the next validation they will give us the yellow card. After the yellow card, if we do not improve in two years, they will give us the red card, meaning the status is withdrawn," he said.

Khalid said claims that Langkawi Geopark had been given the yellow card by Unesco were misleading and could confuse many quarters. He said Lada had done many things and it had to intensify efforts to ensure that all of them would impress Unesco and really benefit the island and the people.

"Next month, there will be more nice signages. The signages must not be too scientific ... they have to be in layman's terms," he said.

Khalid said that under the Langkawi Tourism Blueprint 2011-2015, RM38 million had been allocated specifically for the geopark, especially for upgrading of the geopark infrastructure. "That has been set by Unesco. This is exactly what we have been doing and some work is still going on. We will further upgrade much infrastructure," he said.

Khalid said that for the whole Langkawi island development, private sector cooperation was necessary to inject more funds, especially in the hotels segment. "We need more rooms. In 2012, we had slightly more than 8,000 rooms; now (we have) more than 10,000 rooms, but we need more. A lot of hotels are coming up," he said.

In terms of tourist arrivals, he said that last year the island recorded 3.4 million tourist arrivals, the highest since Langkawi became the premier tourist destination for the country and the world.

"This year, until June, we recorded 1.64 million tourist arrivals. We have revised our target for 2015 to 3.8 million although the blueprint has set a target of three million.

"We have already surpassed the target; so it is not sensible to continue with that target. For tourist receipts, we have met the target of RM3.8 billion for 2015 due to the arrival of 3.4 million tourists last year," he said.
-bernama.