BENGALURU: Tourism Malaysia will launch a 360 degree campaign in April in India to attract more tourists from the country. The Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board (MTPB) wants to attract 10 lakh tourists from India and Sri Lanka this calendar year. To that extent, Tourism Malaysia has announced new tourism destination packages which it will also be promoting during the campaign.
Malaysia’s tourism sector continued to be a significant contributor to the country’s economy in 2015, with global tourist arrivals at 257 lakh. The South Asian market is important to Malaysia and Indians remained its top 10 arrivals in 2014, ranking sixth with a total of 770,108 tourists, while Sri Lanka recorded 61,670 tourists. In 2015, hit by the two Malaysia Airlines mishaps, the number of tourists from India and Sri Lanka declined to 722,141 and 51,337 respectively.
“The campaign that will start in April will be an on-going one. We are targeting Malaysian Ringgit (RM)103 billion revenue from tourists from across the world this year. In 2015, revenues from tourism were RM69.1 billion, in 2014 they were RM72.13 billion,” informed Indian community relations advisor to the Minister of Tourism & Culture Malaysia and a member of Tourism Malaysia board of directors Dato’ Daljit Singh.
Tourism Malaysia’s campaign will include print, digital, outdoor, television and radio. For the present, creatives and media buying will be handled by the MTPB headquarters in Malaysia. “We will look at popular local and regional television channels and radio stations in select cities for the campaign. Even in the case of print, we will be looking at publications that are favoured by readers. For example, in Tamil Nadu, we would look at channels like Sun TV for our TVCs’,” said MTPB director Noor Azman Bin Samsudin.
“Tourism Malaysia has recently revamped its website to make it more user-friendly. We are very much there on social media such as Facebook and Twitter,” revealed MTPB’s senior deputy director – South Asia & Africa Unit and International Promotion Division – Salahuddin Mohd Ariffin.
Further, as part of its efforts to raise awareness on Malaysia as a destination of choice and to engage with the media, Tourism Malaysia has embarked on a sales mission to India and Sri Lanka from 25 February to 3 March. The sales mission is expected to increase tourist arrivals and receipts from the South Asian market during the peak travelling season from May to July.
The 9-day sales mission covers the Indian cities of Chandigarh, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Kochi, and Colombo in Sri Lanka. The delegation, headed by Dato’ Daljit Singh, comprises representatives from travel agents/tour operators, hotels/resorts, tourism products/attractions, state tourism authorities, and airlines. Some of the notable delegates include Genting Malaysia Bhd, Legol and Malaysia Resort, Sunway Lagoon, Tourism Johor, Tourism Selangor, Malaysia Airlines, Malindo Air, and AirAsia.
