Tourism Malaysia harnesses social media for Visit Malaysia Year promotions

photo: Malaysia Truly Asia facebook

 Tourism Malaysia is going deeper into cyberspace with the recent launch of its integrated digital marketing programme, intended to complement existing marketing efforts for Visit Malaysia Year (VMY) 2014.
Said Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, minister of tourism and culture: “Global media consumption is rapidly shifting towards the digital world, thus it is apt that Tourism Malaysia follows suit and goes where the future lies.
“Social media and social networking are on a steady rise, reaching out to nearly one in four people around the world. The number of social media users are expected to rise from 1.5 billion in 2012 to 1.7 billion this year, which is an increase of 18 per cent.”
The integrated digital marketing programme was designed to support VMY 2014 promotions and includes video content on YouTube and TrulyAsia.TV, the ShareMy initiative to encourage tourists to explore Malaysia virtually in the online social realm, as well as Facebook and Twitter presences, the Tourism Malaysia website and a mobile travel app, known as The Malaysia Trip Planner.
The Malaysian government has allocated a budget of RM1.2 billion (US$374.2 million) over a two-year period starting this year for the implementation of VMY 2014 programmes, as well as advertising and promotional expenditure.
VMY 2014 will be officially launched on January 4, 2014 at Dataran Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur. With over 200 tourism events scheduled throughout the whole of next year, the government is targeting 28 million tourist arrivals and RM76 billion in tourism receipts.
-TTG Asia.