Gambia, Malaysia Collaborates In Homestay Programme To Boost Tourism

GEORGE TOWN (Penang, Malaysia), Oct 18 (Bernama) -- The Republic of Gambia and Malaysia are collaborating in homestay programmes to boost the tourism potentials for both countries in conjuction with the World Tourism Conference 2016 here. Gambia Minister of Tourism and Culture, Benjamin Roberts said the conference has provided an opportunity for Gambia to learn and experience on tourism product that will attract more tourist arrivals. "Gambia has a huge potential to gain from the tourism industry and we need to learn from the experts in order to improve on products. "Here, I get the opportunity to meet with the Minister of Tourism and Culture Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz and we have a fruitful discussion on collaborating in homestay with Malaysia having close to 360 homestay programmes," he told Bernama when met on the sideline of the conference here Monday. Besides homestay, Roberts said the discussion with Nazri also extended to cultural exchange and capacity building to cater for more tourists in Gambia. He said among the highlights of Gambia tourism are culture experience, eco-tourism, bird watching and fishing experience. Earlier, Nazri said the conference themed 'Tourism Delight: Delivering the Unexpected' has attracted 733 participants from 32 countries where the speakers will be sharing their success stories, current issue, solutions and best practice case studies. He said the future prospects of tourism continued to be a key question in the tourism fraternity especially Malaysia, who are in the forefront to mainstream tourism in the national development agenda. "Tourism is currently our second highest contributor in terms of foreign exchange earning and third in terms of contribution to Gross National Income (GNI). We have grown significantly, from 5.5 million international tourist arrivals in 1998 to 25.7 million in 2015," he said. He added that the tourism sector generated RM69.1 billion or US$17.6 billion in foreign exchange earnings and accounted for one our of five tourism-related jobs in Malaysia in 2015. -- BERNAMA