Saturday, October 14, 2006

There's a lot of money in that Borneo tag

MILLION-RINGGIT holiday homes along the white sandy beaches of the Karabunai Peninsula, outside Kota Kinabalu, are making a splash as far away as London and Dublin, an international news report several weeks ago said.

The marketing cachet is in the exoticism of the name "Borneo" which both Sabah and Sarawak have been quick to latch on to in their international tourism promotion.

For a variety of reasons, Sabah has been seemingly light-years ahead of Sarawak as a tourist destination and is leveraging that into a similar lead in attracting investors under the banner of the "Malaysia, My Second Home" scheme to rope in well-heeled international retirees.

Given Sabah’s God-given natural assets of rugged mountains and pristine beaches, Sarawak may be forgiven for thinking it is running a tourism-marketing race with severe handicaps.

It need not be.

To the exoticism of the "Borneo" tag, Sarawak can add the romance of its unique history and the understated allure of Borneo’s most sophisticated city: Kuching.

Continue reading at: There's a lot of money in that Borneo tag

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