Malaysian outbound MICE picks up pace after general elections

Business event managers are seeing a rise in demand for outbound meetings and incentives after the recent 13^th Malaysian General Election on May 5.

In an earlier report, Malaysian corporates had held off meetings and incentive trips in the first half of 2013, in anticipation of the country’s general elections.

Abdul Rahman Mohamed, deputy general manager, channel management, Mayflower Acme Tours, said his company had received more enquiries for travel management programmes, especially to Asia, for 2H2013.


“It is good that Malaysia Airlines had increased its weekly frequency from Kuala Lumpur to Phuket to 26 times weekly from June 1, as Phuket is a popular incentive destination and companies like to travel on full service airlines.”

The company also has two confirmed long-haul bookings for incentive groups of under 50 pax each for the third and fourth quarter of this year. One will head to Monaco and the other to Canada.

MICE Hubs Travel & Tours managing director, Konrad Ong, said he had received three firm incentive bookings for Danang, with the earliest being two weeks after the general election and a third for Osaka this August.

He added: “Danang is popular because of its wide variety of food and short distance. We think we’ll be getting more incentive groups wanting to travel to Asia this year (although) lead times are short, with two to three weeks being the trend now.”

He anticipated that 2H2013 would see more overseas bookings compared to the first half of the year, which saw a lot of domestic travel for incentives.

He explained: “In the first half of 2013, everyone was expecting the general elections to be called very soon, and wanted to be in town to vote. In the second half of the year, there are a lot of airline promotions and companies are buying air tickets direct, and using our services for ground arrangements.”

Poto Travel & Tours group CEO, Abdul Rahman Mohd Ali, said he had secured incentive bookings to Turkey, Spain and central Europe for the second half of 2013.

Demand for incentive travel is expected to pick up further after Hari Raya (August 8), and he anticipates demand for Europe in 2H2013 to fare better than the same period in 2012 and 2011 due to increased promotions and seat capacity from Middle Eastern airlines.

-TTG Asia.