CHENNAI, 22 September 2019 – Datuk Tan Kok Liang, President of MATTA & Mr Muhammad Taib Ibrahim, Senior Director Tourism Malaysia Director, gracefully launched the roadshow in Ramada Plaza Hotel, Chennai which welcomes the biggest tourism event in Malaysia, starting next year.

Tourism Malaysia and MATTA jointly organised the roadshow which will cover four main cities of India, namely Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore & Cochin from 23^rd to 26^th September 2019. A total number of 26 participants from Malaysia, comprising a combination of 21-travel agents, 3 product owners, Seri Pacific Hotel Kuala Lumpur, Malindo Air and Sarawak Tourism Board will come together to share the latest development of Malaysian tourism, and to promote the Visit Malaysia 2020 campaign aggressively.

The aim is to provide a platform for Malaysian sellers to meet potential buyers besides enhancing strategic networking with travel agencies, online travel agencies, tourism associations and the media.

The VM2020 roadshow puts emphasis on India as one of the main potential market for the country. In 2018, 600,311 (+8.6%) Indian tourists visited Malaysia and spent almost RM 2.7 billion. Statistic from January until June 2019 show that a total of 354,486 with the growth of 15.2% Indian visited Malaysia compared to same period last year. For the record, Malaysia is aiming a target of 728,000 Indian tourists to visit Malaysia, assisted by three Tourism Malaysia offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

“Tourism in Malaysia is doing well with steady arrivals and tourism development”, stated Mr Muhammad Taib Ibrahim. International tourist arrivals from January to June showed a +4.9% positive growth from 12,730,368 (2018) to 13,354,575.

Top ten international tourist arrivals for the first half of 2019 were from Singapore (5,381,566), Indonesia (1,857,864), China (1,558,782), Thailand (990,565), Brunei (627,112), India (354,486), South Korea (323,952), Philippines (210,974), Vietnam (200,314) and Japan (196,561).

ASEAN arrivals continued to dominate the share of tourist arrivals to Malaysia with a 70% contribution. The medium-haul market and long-haul market occupied a 21% share and a 9% share respectively.

Overall, the performance of the short-haul, medium-haul and long-haul markets registered positive increase with 4.7%, 7.1% and 1.8% growth respectively compared to the first half of 2018.

“In terms of visa, the Malaysian government always facilitates Indian tourists’ entry with ease, since the introduction of eNTRI and eVISa,” he added.

Mr Muhammad Taib Ibrahim reiterated that Malaysia is going full-force in reaching out to the world using the help of the web. “The campaign’s focus is on digital marketing through a dedicated VM2020 website, the use of hashtags for VisitMalaysia2020, VM2020 and MalaysiaTrulyAsia,” he added.

International tourism fairs’ participation as well as Mega Familiarisation programmes are already in place, as Malaysia hopes to reach Indian solo or business travelers, families, honeymooners, or film makers to choose Malaysia as a preferred destination.

For VM2020, Malaysia targets 30 million international tourist arrivals and RM 100 billion in receipts.

ENDS

For more media releases, media info and media features on Malaysia’s tourism industry, kindly visit the Media Centre of Tourism Malaysia’s website at http://www.tourism.gov.my/

MALAYSIA TOURISM PROMOTION BOARD OR TOURISM MALAYSIA is an agency under the Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture Malaysia. It focuses on the specific task of promoting Malaysia as a preferred tourism destination. Since its inception, it has emerged as a major player in the international tourism scene. In 2018, Malaysia registered 25.8 million tourist arrivals and RM84.1 billion tourist receipts, placing it among the major tourism destinations of the world.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Raja Teena Rosdin bt Raja Rosdin (Ms.)
Senior Assistant Director, International Promotion Division - South Asia Desk
rajateena@tourism.gov.my
Tel : +603-8891 8335

Muadz Samat (Mr.)
Assistant Director, Corporate Communication Division
muadz@tourism.gov.my
Tel: +603 8891 8755