By Debra Chong
KUALA TERENGGANU, Jan 8 — The state-owned Ri-Yaz Heritage Resort and Spa in Pulau Duyong near here gleams like a jewel in the sun.
Formerly called the Heritage Bay Club, its exclusive chalets have seen a host of celebrated guests including the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.
It is also the only resort along the length of the east coast with a purpose-built "sailing stadium" — a watery circuit that opens to the South China Sea and home to the Monsoon Cup.
It is where the Who's Who of Malaysia gather to rub shoulders every year during the northeast monsoon season when the state's biggest sailing event starts.
But last December, the Tourism Minister dropped a bombshell.
Datuk Seri Azalina Othman said the Monsoon Cup may move to Sabah this year, to show the international participants more of Malaysia.
The Monsoon Cup was originally a state-run affair until the Barisan Nasional government turned it into a federal event last year.
Her announcement worries the new management running the resort.
"What's going to happen to Kuala Terengganu if the Monsoon Cup is no longer here?" cried Tun Gama Ismail, Ri-Yaz's assistant sales director.
The place may be forced to close down.
Should that happen, the workers would join the ranks of the jobless; unemployment is the state's biggest socio-economic problem especially among the youths.
Gama told The Malaysian Insider that over three-quarters of the resort's workers are local residents. He is concerned for their welfare.
The number of room bookings also dipped last year while the federal government deliberated on where to hold the Monsoon Cup before arriving at a decision two months before the event. The guests also stayed for a shorter time.
Much criticism has been hurled at the sailing event, mooted by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Among them: it is an elitist project; the exorbitant cost was a waste of the state's funds; it did not benefit the local population as it was meant to.
"People still think we are a private club because of the old name," Gama sighed.
The new management is working hard to shake off the resort's elitist image and open it up to the public.
The resort is now being repackaged to cater to the business seminar sector.
It took over operations from the event management company headed by Datuk Wan Hisham Wan Salleh, brother of the Barisan Nasional candidate in the current Kuala Terengganu by-election, just some four months earlier.
But it has no experience in running a resort marina, which had been specially built for the Monsoon Cup. Its sister company is the Cyberview Lodge in Cyberjaya, Selangor. Many of the new management staff came from there.
They slashed the room rates by half. A deluxe room, its cheapest option, starts from RM300. There is free wi-fi in the guest rooms and throughout its extensive grounds.
The eight custom-made wooden gondolas, or "bot penambang" in the local dialect, can be hired for a cruise around the coastal state capital or used as water taxis to the wet market across the channel, at a fee of RM3 per ride.
But while the rooms are currently occupied with the A-list crowd who are in town for the by-election, the marina is more than three-quarters empty.
A custom-made wooden sailboat bobs up and down forlornly beside the pontoon where its owners, a German couple, moored it before flying off to their homeland thousands of nautical miles away.
On the other side, a monitor lizard crawls out from under the boardwalk and splashes into the murky seawater for a short after-lunch swim.
The resort's future seems just as murky right now.
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How can we keep throwing money away? Once the money had been skimmed off, the project become nobody's child.
How can you vote BN in the KT by election? BN candidate's brother is responsible.