He noted that Malaysia combines cultural richness, culinary excellence, natural attractions, strong value, and a mature hospitality sector.
Malaysia’s travel industry recorded strong growth in the past year amidst rebound in travel demand, welcoming 26.6 million international tourist arrivals, whilst domestic tourism also remained a major driver of total expenditure. This momentum was boosted by the country’s cultural diversity, natural attractions, competitive value proposition, and stronger connectivity with key markets that positioned it for future growth.
Against this backdrop, Tourism Solutions International (TSI) Managing Director Eric Levy brings a breadth of experience in hospitality investment, hotel development, asset management, and advisory across Asia. Prior to returning to TSI, he was the Senior Vice President, Growth and Development for Pan Pacific Hotels Group. In this role, he had global responsibility for growing the company through acquisitions and third-party management contracts.
He is also one of the region's most active expert witnesses in litigation support relating to the hospitality industry.
In his capacity as one of the judges for the TDM Travel Trade Excellence Awards 2026 - Malaysia, Levy examines the country’s tourism and hospitality landscape, including its current performance, key operational challenges, and areas requiring improvement. He also provided his insights into how industry stakeholders can pursue sustainable growth whilst preserving local culture and destination identity, as well as the major trends, opportunities, and forces likely to shape the sector’s development over the next few years.
How would you assess the current state of the tourism and hospitality industry in Malaysia?
Malaysia is in a strong position: it has a compelling combination of cultural depth, excellent food, natural assets, good value, well-established urban gateways, and a hospitality sector capable of serving both regional and long-haul visitors. The opportunity now is to move beyond measuring success principally by arrivals and towards greater visitor value, longer stays, stronger local economic participation, and consistently high-quality experiences at all tiers of tourism.
Malaysia’s diversity is a genuine competitive advantage. Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Melaka, Langkawi, Sabah, and Sarawak each offer a distinct reason to travel, and that breadth allows the country to appeal to leisure, business-events, wellness, family, culinary, nature, and luxury travellers. The next stage is to connect these assets more coherently through better destination storytelling, seamless mobility, and stronger service consistency.
What are the biggest operational challenges currently facing hotels, attractions, and tourism operators across the region?
The most immediate operational challenge remains people. Hotels, attractions and tourism businesses are competing for skilled staff whilst managing rising expectations around service, digital capability, language skills, sustainability, and career progression. Retention will depend not only on wages but also on training, leadership quality, workplace culture, and credible pathways for young people to build long-term careers in hospitality.
Cost pressures are also significant. Energy, food, insurance, maintenance, technology and financing costs continue to affect margins, whilst guests increasingly expect personalised, frictionless and sustainably operated experiences. Operators need sharper commercial discipline: using technology where it improves the guest journey and productivity, whilst protecting the human warmth and judgement that distinguish excellent hospitality.
A further challenge is uneven standards across the visitor journey. A memorable hotel alone is not enough if airport arrivals, transport, public-realm maintenance, attraction interpretation or last-mile connectivity fall short. Tourism is a whole-destination product, so its quality depends on coordinated execution by public agencies, owners, operators, communities and service providers.
How can tourism stakeholders better balance destination growth with preserving local culture and identity?
Growth and authenticity should not be treated as competing objectives. Local culture, heritage, landscape and community life are precisely what make a destination distinctive; if they are diluted, tourism erodes the asset on which it depends.
Stakeholders should involve local communities early in planning, especially where development affects access, livelihoods, heritage precincts or sensitive natural environments. Communities should receive visible benefits through local employment, supplier opportunities, training, conservation funding and genuine participation in decisions, not merely consultation after key choices have already been made.
The industry should also be cautious about importing generic concepts that could sit anywhere. The strongest hotels, tours, restaurants, and attractions interpret the place with respect: working with local artisans and producers, presenting history accurately, protecting cultural protocols, and giving visitors meaningful context rather than a superficial performance of “local flavour.”
What do you think the industry still needs to improve to sustain long-term growth and remain competitive?
Malaysia needs sustained investment in three areas: talent, infrastructure, and destination management. Talent development must include both technical capability and the softer disciplines of hospitality — anticipation, problem-solving, cultural fluency, and emotional intelligence.
Infrastructure means more than new hotels or airports. It includes reliable domestic and regional connectivity, accessible public spaces, clean and safe visitor facilities, multilingual wayfinding, digital access, and thoughtful planning for peak periods. A destination becomes more competitive when moving through it is simple, welcoming, and predictable.
Destination management must become more data-led. Visitor numbers, spending, length of stay, seasonality, resident sentiment, environmental capacity, and local economic benefit should all inform policy. This supports more balanced dispersal beyond the principal gateways and helps prevent overcrowding before it undermines the visitor and resident experience.
What do you believe will be the biggest forces shaping the future of tourism and hospitality in Malaysia over the next five years?
Over the next five years, the most important forces will be the search for meaningful experiences, the rise of digitally enabled travel, climate resilience, and an intensified competition for high-value travellers. Visitors will continue to value convenience, but they will increasingly choose destinations that offer a sense of place, wellbeing, nature, culture, and credible sustainability.
Artificial intelligence and data will reshape distribution, pricing, guest communication, and service personalisation. However, technology should support, not replace hospitality. The winning operators will use it to remove friction and free their teams to spend more time creating thoughtful, human experiences.
Sustainability will also become a commercial imperative rather than a marketing theme. Water stewardship, waste reduction, renewable energy, biodiversity protection, responsible sourcing and resilience to extreme weather will increasingly influence operating costs, investor confidence, regulatory expectations, and guest choice. Malaysia has an opportunity to show that environmental stewardship and premium hospitality can reinforce each other.
As a returning judge for the TDM Travel Trade Excellence Awards 2026 - Malaysia, what new ideas or initiatives are you most looking forward to seeing from this year's nominees?
As a returning judge for the TDM Travel Trade Excellence Awards 2026 - Malaysia, I look forward to seeing nominees demonstrate innovation with clear operational substance.
I am particularly interested in initiatives that deliver measurable benefit rather than simply attractive narratives: stronger local employment and supplier ecosystems, meaningful decarbonisation and resource-efficiency programmes, authentic cultural partnerships, accessible travel design, and technology that tangibly improves the guest or employee experience.
I also hope to see entries that show courage in redefining success. The most impressive organisations will be those that can demonstrate commercial performance alongside positive outcomes for their people, their communities and the destinations in which they operate. In a market as diverse and promising as Malaysia, excellence is not only about being bigger; it is about being more distinctive, responsible and enduring.
