High end tourists shying away from Chenang Beach
LANGKAWI: High end tourists seem to be shying away from spending their time and money at Chenang Beach, one of the popular tourism spots in Langkawi.
Langkawi Tourism Association (LTA) chief executive officer, Zainudin Kadir said this situation is reflected by a sharp drop to as much as 40% in occupancy rate experienced by four and five-star hotels near the beach.
"High end hotel operators have complained to me about the drop which they had suffered since Aug this year and obviously, this was all due to the situation that happened at Chenang Beach now," he said when met today.
He said one of the reasons for the drop was that these high end tourists were disappointed by the uncontrolled presence of vehicles coming into and out of the beach area, which they said had compromised their safety.
"For the whole of last year, the association had received a total of 683 complaints from tourists and (from January this year) until Oct, there are 776 complaints … an increase of about 30% and all were about vehicles coming in and out of the beach," he said.
Zainudin said the unruly traffic situation and congestion caused by vehicles parked indiscriminately along both sides of the road was also another reason that caused most tourists to be disappointed.
He said based on the feedbacks that he gathered, some of the drivers who parked their vehicles indiscriminately on the roadsides had no choice as there were no ample parking spaces near Chenang.
"There is a park and ride area designed to accommodate as many as 400 cars at one time which is under construction near Chenang since last year but the project had not been completed until now," he said.
The association would continue to work with the relevant authorities to iron out the problems which according to him, had already came to the knowledge of Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak, who visited the area several months ago.
"We need firm commitments from the authorities concerned to help the tourism players at Chenang to continue receiving high end visitors. Otherwise, the future will look bleak for them," he added. — Bernama