Lankans, Indians to prop up Malaysian tourist arrivals
View(s):Malaysia’s Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz is visiting Sri Lanka next week in a bid to popularise the Visit Malaysia Year (VMY) 2014 programme and promote a sales mission in this regard.
The visiting minister is reportedly also expected to visit India as well as part of their programme to attract increased visitors from these two countries.
It was reported that the 10-day mission starting March 10 would cover Colombo, Sri Lanka and four Indian cities namely Kochi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi.
“The mission is mainly to drum up Visit Malaysia Year 2014 as well as Malaysia Year of Festival in 2015,” Tourism Malaysia’s Director in New Delhi, Amran Abdul Rahman was reportedly quoted as saying in a statement.
The Year of Festival was announced during the Malaysian budget last year, which was expected to generate more revenue and attract more tourists to Malaysia, it was stated.
Minister Nazri would be accompanied by top officials from the Ministry, travel agents as well as hoteliers. Tourism Malaysia’s Director-General, Datuk Mirza Mohammad Taiyab would also be part of the mission, the report stated. In both Sri Lanka and India, he is scheduled to meet key travel operators, among others the Travel Agent Association of Sri Lanka, IATA Association as well as travel bloggers and media personnel, it was reportedly stated.
The mission would also be travelling with a dance troupe Istana Budaya that would be conducting several cultural performances during the tour in all locations, it was reported.
Besides VMY promotion, the mission would also look at increasing the bilateral ties between the countries through the cultural and heritage aspects of each other, it was stated. Malaysia aims to attract 28 million tourists and earn RM76 billion in tourism revenue through VMY.
Last year, tourist arrivals grew by 2.7 per cent to 25.7 million arrivals as compared with 25 million arrivals in 2012. It contributed RM51.5 billion to the Gross National Income (GNI) in 2013.
India was among the top 10 tourist generating markets with 650,989 arrivals last year.