LANGKAWI: The island's tourism industry is not as dire as depicted by certain quarters claiming that many restaurants have wound up due to poor business.
Kuah assemblyman Amar Pared Mahamud said claims that Langkawi was no longer being favoured by domestic visitors, were baseless.
"Please don't get overly excited in sabotaging tourism players here as most of them are still recovering from the economic devastation from the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We need to understand the basic facts that the visitors' arrival to this island is based on four seasons – the rainy season; dry season; low season and peak season.
"It is common that visitors (arrival) are lesser during the rainy season and the dry spell, but the numbers will bounce back during festive holidays and school breaks," he said when contacted today.
Amar Pared added that domestic visitors' arrival to Langkawi could be boosted by the federal government resolving issues pertaining to logistics, particularly the ferry services.
"The government has promised to resolve Langkawi passenger ferry services prior to the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition back in May, but the issue is still prolonged until now.
"We also hope that the federal government will initiate more direct flights to the island," he said.
Meanwhile, Langkawi Residents Tourism Association (LRTA) chairman Hazani Hussin said the tourism sector was very sensitive to such negative publicity.
"Actually, based on the data released by Langkawi Development Authority (Lada) recently, Langkawi recorded 2.04 million visitors as of the third quarter of this year.
"The data itself explains claims that the island is suffering from critical visitors' arrival is inaccurate.
"In fact, claims that the hotel bookings for Deepavali next week is just at 10 per cent is totally misleading compared to the actual situation on the ground," he said when contacted.
Citing an example, he said an accommodation operator told him that the latter had obtained nearly 50 per cent room bookings until the end of this month.