Professor Badaruddin Mohamed briefing the crowd during the Penang Transport Masterplan Town Hall Session in George Town, Penang February 13, 2020. — Picture by Sayuti Zainudin
“You talk about revitalising alternative tourism and yet I see micro projects of building this or that structure when there is no proof that building more things will bring in more tourists,” she said after listening in to the two-hour presentation of the plan by YZD Planning and Consult chief consultant Prof Badaruddin Mohamed.
She argued that it was obvious building more structures would not translate to more tourists, yet the plan consisted primarily of more construction.“We seem to have more tourist arrivals and more direct flights to Penang but the number of tourists from Singapore has been dropping in the past three years, tourists from Australia are also dropping and tourists from the UK are also dropping, so how do you explain that?” she asked.
“Why don’t we have any data? Why don’t we know who are the tourists coming here? Do we really need to create an app for this?” she asked. Earlier in his presentation, Badaruddin, who is from the consultancy firm appointed to develop the master plan, revealed that there will be 104 initiatives under the PGTMP that included physical projects and programmes.