Malaysia to lure tourists turned away by 2014 mishaps

Tourism Malaysia will step up efforts in new markets and expand its traditional markets through its three-year integrated promotional plan that runs up to 2017.

New markets on the agenda includes North Africa, Russia, CIS countries, Argentina and Brazil. The NTO will also continue to expand its presence in traditional markets such as ASEAN, North Asia and South Asia, including second- and third-tier cities in China and India.

While tourist arrivals from January to August 2014 grew 10.3 per cent year-on-year, the minister of tourism and culture Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz is not confident Malaysia that would meet its 2014 target, citing that arrivals might be short by 600,000.

Tourist receipts might also be less than the targeted RM76 billion (US$23.4 billion), “but they would be better than 2013”, he said, adding that the air tragedies last year and the kidnappings in Sabah certainly impacted visitor arrivals to Malaysia.

Meanwhile, he said details of the visa fee waiver for Chinese tourists would be released following confirmation of the Cabinet’s minutes of meeting, hopefully in time to leverage the Chinese New Year holidays.

“Last year, we lost 540,000 tourists from China last year – otherwise we could have reached our target of 28 million tourists easily.”

-TTG Asia.