Sabah, Malaysian Borneo is renowned for its friendly, warm and culturally diverse traditional communities as well as fascinating landscapes and world-class quality of wildlife and nature. Therefore, “Village-Stay” or “Home-Stay” have been developed in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo to showcase the uniqueness and richness of Sabah’s traditional cultural heritage to the world.
Village-Stay is a variant of Home-Stay concept; both are categorised as ‘Rural Tourism’ development, where strategic rural areas are identified and developed for the purpose of maximising tourism economic benefits for the interior communities.
Village-Stay is defined as a generic name to describe a form of holiday that is affordable, has a structured itinerary and involves a high degree of educational and experiential elements. The Village-Stay concept in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo is unique as visitors do not only experience the hospitality and traditions of the local communities in village lifestyle, but they also have an opportunity to visit a wide range of unexplored or ‘less popular’ nature-adventure destinations which are hidden from the destructive nature of mass tourism.
The Village-Stay concept has a great potential to be developed in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo for various reasons. Firstly, there has been an increasing demand from ‘alternative tourists’ for “Alternative Tourism” products; rural tourism (a form of alternative tourism) provides the tool for branding local, organic and traditional products. This encourages further development in ‘Alternative Tourism’ variants such as Cultural Tourism, Adventure Tourism, Green Tourism, Responsible Tourism, Traditional-Health Tourism, Conservation Tourism, Eco Tourism, Volunteer Tourism, Agro Tourism, etc, offering different travel experiences for different market segments.
Secondly, there has also been an increasing demand from corporate-incentive organisers for new destinations/sites; such organisers are looking for facilities located in remote (or new) areas; they want to combine under-commercialised nature adventure destinations with educational activities such as motivational, team building, group work, corporate games, training, orientation, experiential, etc.
Thirdly, the concept of village-Stay supports the diversification of tourism product in order to meet new demands in the market, creating business and employment opportunities for the interior community members hence, provides the means to promote sustainable development of rural tourism. Village-Stay can be viewed as a catalyst for generating other variants such as Urban Stay, Beach Stay, Jungle Stay, Agro Village Stay, Fishing Village Stay, Cultural Village Stay, Long House Stay, Health Farm Stay, etc.
Finally, the cultural elements in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo is very authentic; not only the ethnic communities in Sabah have strong connections with their cultural and traditional values, but they are also culturally-diverse with more than 30 ethic groups such as Bajau, Murut, Dusun, Rungus, Orang Sungei, etc.
The pulsating drum rolls from deputy chief minister Peter Pang En Yin and Dr Yee Moh Chai, minister of resource development and information technology, ushered in the Chinese new year festival. The lunar new year day falls on February 3. Young people performed the yearly traditional dragon, lion and unicorn dances at the Merdeka Padang in Kota Kinabalu on January 22 with great cultural fervour. They seemed to have answered chief minister Musa Aman’s call to make them popular or else they will vanish.
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