Sarawak Plans Chartered Flights from Seoul

MIRI: Direct chartered flights from Seoul to Miri in northern Sarawak will start next year, said Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) chief executive officer Gracie Geikie.

She said a planeload of about 180 Korean tourists will be visiting Miri and the Mulu National Park and taking part in the Miri International Jazz Festival 2007 here in May.

“These Korean tourists belong to a major golf club that has more than 8,000 members in Korea. They have confirmed their plans to come to northern Sarawak using a chartered aircraft,” she said.

“We (STB) are trying to arrange with Malaysia Airlines to facilitate this tour package from Korea to Miri, direct without any stops. We are also looking at the possibility of arranging similar direct chartered flights to Miri from other Far East countries and Europe,” she told a press conference here yesterday when launching the Miri international jazz festival logo here.

Geikie said the jazz festival to be held on May 11 and 12 will be a major event to commemorate Visit Malaysia Year 2007 and to celebrate Miri City Day on May 20.

Renowned jazz groups from Cuba, Morocco, Germany, India, France, New Orleans in the United States, Australia, England, Spain and China will be taking part in the musical.

“CNN have agreed to give coverage to this event and so has Discovery Channel and Travel and Living. This event will be shown to global audiences and hopefully will give a lot of international publicity to this part of Sarawak,” said Geikie.

“STB will soon arrange with a global online ticketing agency to enable tickets to this jazz festival to be purchased via Internet,” she said, adding that the festival will be held at the Parkcity Everly beach resort, which overlooks the South China Sea.

STB hoped to turn this jazz musical extravaganza into a major tourism success just like the Rainforest Music Festival in Kuching, she said.

The rainforest music show brings in more than RM10mil in revenue yearly by drawing more than 20,000 visitors.

News Source : STAR
[tags : malaysiahotelnews hotels malaysia resorts news]