Ketengah to introduce luxury boathouse holiday at Lake Kenyir

KUALA TERENGGANU: The Central Terengganu Development Authority (Ketengah) will be a pioneer in luxury tourism packages by offering sophisticated and exclusive boathouses at Lake Kenyir in the next two years.

Its chairman Datuk Razali Idris said the move was aimed at further strengthening the name of Lake Kenyir as an international tourist destination with a choice of more private holiday packages on a boathouse equipped with facilities and interior decoration rivalling that of any five-star hotel.

"This proposal was agreed upon during the recent Ketengah board of directors' meeting. For a start, Ketengah itself will introduce the luxury boathouse as a new icon in Lake Kenyir.

"For example, we can refer to are luxury boathouses in Finland that can meet the needs and tastes of upper-class tourists, especially from abroad who want a private holiday with family or for entrepreneurs and businessmen to conduct their various business affairs in Lake Kenyir," he said.

He said this to reporters after presenting a mock check of RM67,550 to the Terengganu Media Journalists Club (Kawat) for the Kawat Awards Day 2022 which was also attended by more than 50 media practitioners from various agencies here, last night.

According to Razali, these luxury boathouses must meet several criteria including using green technology that is more environmentally friendly for the sake of environmental sustainability in Lake Kenyir, the best safety features and the number of occupants must not exceed 20 people, similar to the capacity limit of the existing boathouses.

"Thus far, there have been several investors interested in this proposal and we are still discussing to finalise some of the details, especially in terms of expertise for its construction as well as methods to bring it into Lake Kenyir as the existing road is quite narrow.

"We set our target as early as 2023 to offer this new boathouse holiday to tourists and at the same time, produce spillover effects to the existing traditional boathouse operators, as each has a different tourist target," he said.

Currently, there are more than 70 boathouses in Lake Kenyir with an average occupancy rate of RM3,000 per night with a passenger capacity of between 25 to 30 people.

-- BERNAMA