Tourism Malaysia has said it is confident it can achieve its target of 22.5 million tourist arrivals and MYR50.5 billion in revenue this year, despite the world economic slowdown. Bernama has reported that it is trying to achieve this by offering untapped and niche tourism products.
Medical tourism, education tourism, eco-tourism, MICE, and homestays will be the forefront of Tourism Malaysia’s advertising and promotional campaigns in the coming months, according to its Director for East Asia, North Asia and South-East Asia, Chong Yoke Har.
“Initially, we were worried too and were thinking of revising down our figure of tourist arrivals this year, but we decided not to do so after we had met the big Malaysian industry players,” Chong said.
She said they became confident with the market after looking at the plans of the local players including the Malaysian airlines and Air Asia, which said they had the numbers needed.
Tourist arrivals to Malaysia for September had dropped by 0.1% to 1.59 million, but year-to-date figures showed an increase of 4.4% to 16.3 million. The top five tourist-generating markets for Malaysia during this period were Singapore (8.12m), Indonesia (1.71m), Thailand (1.1m), Brunei (414,248), and Greater China (728,176).
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