Move Ipoh airport elsewhere

The Government should not waste RM60mil to upgrade the Sultan Azlan Shah Airport but put the money to better use elsewhere as the airport has not contributed much to the growth of the city, said a special MCA committee gathering feedback for the proposed Ipoh Draft Local Plan 2020.

Committee deputy chairman San Chak Chun said the airport had instead hindered the development of the city as high-rise buildings could not be erected there.

“Under a ruling by the DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) buildings within the city area cannot be built higher than 130m above sea level. It has made clear that no buildings can hinder the flight path within the Kinta Valley."

San added that the RM60mil allocation approved by the Cabinet to extend the airport runway by 200m and upgrade the airport terminal, could be used for a new airport elsewhere.
He added that the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang Jaya had caused the value of property surrounding it to depreciate.

In the case of the Melaka Batu Berendam Airport some RM 200 million was spent to upgrade the airport which has now come to be another aviation white elephant. Planners should have been more professional in their study to ensure that money is not put in wasteful projects.

Danum Valley A World Heritage Site

The Sabah government is mulling the possibility of nominating Danum Valley in the east coast of Sabah as a World Heritage Site.

State Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Datuk Masidi Manjun said this reflected the state government's commitment to preserve Danum Valley - regarded as the Lost World of Borneo - given its almost undisturbed tropical rainforest and abundance of biodiversity.

On the progress of the state government's decision to nominate Maliau Basin in the south central part of Sabah as a World Heritage Site, Masidi said a technical committee had been formed to finalise details of that proposal to be forwarded to the Unesco World Heritage Centre for consideration.

The Maliau Basin, known as Sabah's Lost World, was declared a Sabah Foundation conservation area in 1981.In 1997, the state cabinet agreed to gazette the 588sq km site as a Protection Forest Reserve (Class 1).

Sabah currently has a World Heritage Site, namely the Kinabalu Park, where the 4,092-metre Mount Kinabalu is located.

Homestay info to go mobile

The promotion of homestay in Malaysia is going mobile with the launch of iPhone and Blackberry applications.

Developed by MoAd Technologies, the smartphone applications will incorporate global positioning system (GPS) enabled Google maps, photo galleries and even phrase book features.

MoAd Technologies said in a statement yesterday the multimedia applications would boost marketing efforts, and allow tourists easier access to information during their stay in the country.

“Smart phones have gained tremendous popularity. Indeed, it is the fastest growing mobile phone segment,” the statement said.

In an instructional video available at Tourism Malaysia’s homestay promotions website, go2homestay.com, one of the coolest features demonstrated is the phrase book.

Users will be able to select sentences like, “Where is the closest eatery?” in English, and have the application voice it out in Bahasa Malaysia.

Adding more input and output languages are future possibilities.

Other features include entries on places of interests, coupled with GPS technology that allows turn-by-turn directions. It is worth pointing out the applications also include a built-in, video-calling feature.

The feature, which connects to the Tourism Ministry, allows prospective international clients to communicate directly with homestay operators visually.

Do more to promote local attractions

MATTA has been urged to do more to promote local attractions.

MATTA Fair in future should also promote tourist destinations in Perak, said senior state exco member Datuk Hamidah Osman.

She said although the fair was aimed at promoting destinations overseas, tour operators should also do more to promote local destinations such as eco-tourism in Belum and heritage trails.

Datuk Hamidah also reminded tourism players to help make Visit Perak Year in 2012 a success. “We will have seminars and meetings next year to promote Visit Perak Year 2012,” she said.

She was speaking while launching the MATTA Fair 2010 organised by the MATTA Perak Chapter at Dewan Leong Wan Chin in SMJK Perempuan Ipoh from Friday till yesterday.

Fair organising secretary Aminurrashid Abas said the event had been successfully organised for the last nine years. He said MATTA fairs had proven to be Malaysia ’s number one travel fair.

Exhibitors took up all the 80 exhibition booths in this year’s fair. Aminurrashid estimated that some 30,000 people thronged the fair during the three days.

LONELY PLANET E-BOOKS

As the e-book market starts becoming more mainstream, some electronic titles are beginning to outsell their paper versions. Because of these rapid developments, traditional paper publishers are quickly developing e-versions of their popular publications.

Lonely Planet, one of the biggest names in travel publishing just released their first five e-books to the Apple iBooks store. Their Discover guides are available for Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France and Ireland.

Unlike some static e-books, the Lonely Planet Discover guides have been completely recreated with a variety of interactive features. The guides offer over 3000 hyperlinks, detailed maps, bookmark, note and highlight options as well as hundreds of images.

Of course, you'll need an iPad to enjoy the guide, and walking down the streets of Paris while staring at your iPad may not be the best idea, but it should make pre-planning and planning from your hotel room much easier.

Best of all, because the content is stored locally, you won't burn through expensive international cellular data or WiFi to access information.