Hotel’s website promotes Malaysia as a tourist destination

ACCOR, one of Asia-Pacific’s leading international hotel operators recently unveiled its interactive and user-friendly Destination Malaysia website to provide tourists the latest information on highlights in Malaysia.

The website that was launched by Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen in November last year aims to encourage domestic as well as in-bound tourism in Malaysia. Adi Satria, Accor sales, marketing and distribution regional director, said that the website was created to raise awareness of the country’s many unique attractions and cultural heritage sites besides boosting Malaysia’s profile as tourism destination.

Adi Satria

“Accor is the only international hotel group to have a localised website to promote Malaysia as a tourist destination to help tourists plan their travel itinerary in Malaysia,” he said.

“Malaysia is an important market locals and tourists from other countries should know about it,” he added.

The website features information for tourists on a myriad of recent events and festivals, shopping destinations, as well as various attractions all around Malaysia.

Web users can catch a glimpse of the diverse range of food and beverages that are a feature of Malaysia’s multi-cultural society. There are also beautiful photos depicting the country famous tourist attractions as well as descriptions of the country’s events and festivals. Users can also place their bookings through to website for their preferred hotels under the Accor group in Malaysia.

The website alone had generated around 20,000 bookings for room until the end of May this year, with a daily traffic flow of 17,000 users who visited the site from all around the world. “With the website running, Accor had an increase of 40% in room bookings through online booking compared to three years back, which only yield 15% for all bookings,” Adi said. “To date, we have had 12% growth in room nights compared to last year, adding up to 26% increase in this year’s revenue for the company,” he added.

Adi declined to disclose the exact amount of investment required for the website. He added that the main goal of the online business initiative is to boost in-bound tourism in the future. Working closely with Tourism Malaysia had lead Accor to market the destination website to both business and leisure travellers as well as complementing the tourism’s marketing efforts both online and offline through collaborations on content syndication and partnership activities.

Accor also utilises consumer engagement to promote the hotel by tapping into social networks. Their official Facebook page has the latest promotions and offers to connect with a pool of international users and promote their hotels. “We also provided a trial experience for bloggers on our hotels and services. This is also a way to market our hotels and services to a larger audiences when they write about them,” he said.

Developing the website has channelled significant increase in revenue to the company. Adi also shared that the company is expected to maintain an increase of room nights of 12% on a year-to-year basis and hopes to reach a high of 15%. “We are also planning to have partnerships with Malaysia airlines to try to do similar exercises to promote in-bound tourism,” he said. “We are giving travellers a myriad of offers and promotions to cater to the different expectations for the domestic and in-bound tourism sector,” he said.

Malaysians can expect two new additions to the hospitality industry as Accor will be opening ibis Style Cheras and ibis Style Kuala Lumpur Fraser Business Park in the last quarter of the year. Currently, Accor manages the Pullman Putrajaya Lakeside, Pullman Kuching, Novotel Kuala Lumpur City Centre and Novotel Kota Kinabalu 1 Borneo. The group has nine hotels in the pipeline from 2012 to 2014.

For more information, visit the Destination Malaysia website at www.accorhotels.com/malaysia.

-thestar online.