More should be done for Penang's tourism!

Now that George Town has been made a World Heritage site by UNESCO, two of the most important objectives for the Penang state government will be to determine how to conserve the heritage in the city and how to draw more tourists to visit here. I won't be touching on conservation at this time because it is a huge area that is already covered by non-governmental organisations like the Penang Heritage Trust but I'd just want to comment a bit on the tourism aspect.

For decades, we have had tourists from all over the world coming here. Tourism is not something new to Penang. But ever since the old state administrations concentrated on making Penang into a manufacturing hub from the 1970s, I felt that tourism has been neglected to the point that many our tourist spots seemed dated and would need a fresh coat of promotion. You'll have to pardon the mixing up of my metaphors...

Left to their own devices, I suppose the tourist spots will continue to survive but the state government must show its effort to promote them as well. We should not lose our focus on them because these tourist areas had served us well in the past and they can continue to serve us well again in the future.

Our tourist attractions have a long history to fall back on and right now, we have the heritage aspect as well. So I urge the government: please use our history, our people and our heritage to our advantage.

In today's newspaper, for example, I read that the state government is planning to put up street names and road signs in multiple languages at heritage areas here for the benefit of tourists and visitors.

I fully support this initiative but I hope this is not a knee-jerk reaction to the recent publicity stunt by a group of people as the Penang State Assembly was sitting. On Monday, they went about to put up their own road signs in Chinese at Beach Street (Thor Kor Kay or Wholesale Street), Burmah Road (Chia Chooi Lor or Water Carriers Road), Macalister Road (Tiong Lor or Middle Road), Carnarvon Street (Lam Chan Nah or Muddy Padi Field), Chulia Street (Gu Guan Tang or Cattle Pen Street) and Jalan C.Y. Choy.

According to state exco member Chow Kon Yeow, the languages would depend on the cultural characteristics of the streets in question. “There have been requests for road signs in various languages now that George Town has received Unesco recognition as a world heritage site. The state has, in principle, agreed to have signs in Bahasa Malaysia, English, Chinese and Tamil, and maybe even Arabic."