BEIJING, Sept 10 (Bernama) -- Air accessibility and hotel accommodation shortage are among the challenges faced by Tourism Malaysia in promoting the country's tourism industry, according to its chairman Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen.
The Ministry of Tourism and Culture would discuss the matter with AirAsia's representatives as soon as possible, including on opening new routes from mainland China and offering chartered flight service, she said during a meeting with nine local tour operators, here, Tuesday.
Currently, Malaysia's low-cost carrier AirAsia flies from only 12 destinations in mainland China to Kuala Lumpur, while Malaysia's national carrier, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) only operates flights from nine destinations in mainland China to Kuala Lumpur.
Dr Ng said currently, Malaysia was still in need of about 90,000 hotel rooms to meet the demand and to achieve its target of attracting 36 million tourist arrivals by 2020. Malaysia recorded a total of 943,756 Chinese tourist arrivals in the first half of 2013, up 24.5 per cent from the figure in the same period last year.
Dr Ng said various travel packages, including theme tours and luxury travel packages which focused on specific interests should be enhanced to attract China's tourists during Visit Malaysia Year 2014. "These include leisure, medical, nature, culinary, cycling and cultural tours.
"Leisure tourism promoting Malaysia's islands and beaches should also be boosted as we have about 847 beautiful islands with blue skies and white clouds," she said.
On China's new tourism law which will take effect on Oct 1 this year, Dr Ng said Tourism Malaysia would deliberate with Malaysian travel agencies to adapt to the new law and look into creative ways to draw tourists.
She said the new law might hamper Malaysia's tourism in the short term but fortunately, so far there had been no reports of cancellation of tour packages from China to Malaysia. "China is the world's largest outbound tourism market, hence it is a natural development to implement the new law," she added.
A seminar for Tourism Malaysia and Chinese travel agencies will be held in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 23 to provide a better understanding of the implementation of the new law.
Under Article 35 of the new law, travel agencies are prohibited from organising tourism activities and luring tourists with unreasonably low prices, or getting illegitimate gains such as rebates by arranging shopping or providing tourism services that require additional payment.
"When organising and receiving tourists, travel agencies shall not designate specific shopping places, or provide tourism services that require additional payment," it says. However, this does not include circumstances where both sides have agreed or the tourists have requested for such arrangements and no influence is caused on the itinerary of other tourists.
-bernama.
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