Sarawak Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports, the Honourable Datuk Haji Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah today unveiled the Visit Sarawak Year logo as a precursor to its official launch in January 2019 at an industry event held in Kuala Lumpur today.

The Visit Sarawak logo will be the anchor emblem for the Visit Sarawak campaign.

Designed to connote fun, and friendliness, the multi-coloured logo spelling out “Sarawak” with the tagline, “More to Discover,” represents the aspirations of the campaign.

Comprising seven colours, in curled script, the red and yellow colours represent the state flag while orange represents the strong spirit and vibrant energy of the different ethnic communities within Sarawak, which is quintessential to Sarawak’s diverse tourism proposition.

Green is used to represent the verdant rainforests abundant with wildlife and blue is used to represent the calmness of the ocean along Sarawak’s long coastline.

The uniqueness of the logo is augmented by the hornbill, which replaces the letter “A,” representing Sarawak’s moniker, “Bumi Kenyalang,” or “Land of the Hornbills” that the State has been known for many years, which is also an important symbol of luck to the indigenous people of Sarawak.

Hamzah said that the Visit Sarawak campaign is envisioned to place Sarawak on the tourism map as one of the preferred tourism destinations in Southeast Asia.

“The tagline, “More to Discover” underscores Sarawak Tourism Board’s strategy to position the state as a plethora of culture, adventure, nature, food, and festivals (CANFF) that is not found anywhere else in the world, and ready to be discovered.

“We will be looking at rolling out through the line campaigns in each of our target markets with the aim to increase visitor arrivals to Sarawak to 5.2 million by the end of 2019.”

He said that the State will target six international markets with domestic tourists at the fore.

Sarawak had recorded a total spending of RM8.59 billion from tourism in 2017, which accounted for 7.9% of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Domestic arrivals will be one of the key targets.

“We will target an increase of 12% in arrivals from the Malaysian market. We are confident that we will be able to achieve our target as Sarawak has a lot to offer Malaysians as we have everything at a fraction of the price, just a little more than an hour away from the West Malaysia.”

International arrivals to Sarawak clocked in at 2.6 million last year. Some of the key international markets for Visit Sarawak will be UK, Germany, the Benelux, China, Australia, ASEAN countries.

ASEAN countries were a key source of visitors, which accounted for 48.98% or 2.38 million arrivals in 2017.

Askor said,

“Digital will be a large part of our campaign. Besides creating content on digital platforms to reach out to our markets, we are also developing a mobile app which will anchor the discovery process for all our visitors.”

The event saw a performance by award-winning Sarawakian songstress, Dayang Nurfaizah, and Tuku Kame, an award-winning world music band who has conducted global tours.