Tourism Promotional Programmes Will Focus On Domestic Market

Written by Gunboy on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 27 (Bernama)– Tourism promotional programmes for next year will focus more on domestic market, said Tourism Malaysia Acting Director-General Amirrudin Abu.

He said the tourism domestic market would cushion the impact of the global economic crisis on the tourism industry in the country.

“We got good response from the domestic market especially during school holidays and 60 per cent of our hotel visitors are locals,” he said after the Mega Familiarisation Programme Business Presentation, here Thursday.

He said there were many attractive areas in the country that Malaysians were not aware of or had taken for granted.

“So far the ministry has organized programmes with schools through the Tourism Club to encourage study visits among students,” he said.

He said Malaysia recorded 18,148,159 tourist arrivals from January to October this year, an increase of 4.8 per cent compared to last year.

However, due to the global economic crisis, the ministry must be more selective in its coming promotional programmes, he said.

“Apart from the domestic market, promotional programmes will also focus on regional markets like Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia and also the emerging countries which are not too badly affected by the crisis, such as China, India, Middle East countries and Russia,” he added.

– BERNAMA