Gearing up to draw tourists

Liow (second from left) with Zulkifly (second from right) at the Tourism Malaysia Media Night

at R&F Sales Gallery.

JOHOR BARU: Tourism Malaysia is doubling up local and international promotion as part of its efforts to achieve Visit Malaysia 2020’s (VM2020) target of 30 million tourist arrivals and RM100bil in tourism receipts.

Tourism Malaysia deputy director-general (planning) Zulkifly Md Said said some of the initiatives were rolled out earlier this year, such as optimising the use of information and communication technology and engaging in smart partnerships with industry players.

“Optimising information and communication technology is an engaging approach in promotion, publicity and advertising efforts while social media is one of the best platforms for promoting Malaysia.

“We have initiated various smart partnerships with our industry players aside from leveraging on the presence of international hotel brands who continue to place their trust by setting up their hotels in Malaysia, ” he said in his speech at the Tourism Malaysia Media Night at R&F Sales Gallery.

Tourism Malaysia also partnered with hotels such as Amari Hotels & Resorts, DoubleTree by Hilton Hotels, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Hard Rock Hotel, One & Only Resorts and Anantara Hotels & Resorts.

Zulkifly also pointed out that as of June 20, Tourism Malaysia has 3.3 million Facebook followers, 76,684 Instagram followers, 422,632 Twitter followers and 45.7 million views on YouTube.

He added that in 2018, it managed to record 25.8 million international tourist arrivals with tourist receipts amounting to RM84.1bil.

“As a comparison, Malaysia received a total of 25.9 million international tourists in 2017, with RM82.2bil in tourism receipts.

“As for 2019, in this first six months, Malaysia recorded a positive tourist arrival growth of 6.8%, registering a total of 13,354,575 tourist arrivals compared to 12,730,368 in the same period last year, ” he added.

Zulkifly said this was the result of strategic initiatives and other promotional efforts.

Meanwhile, Johor tourism, women, family and community development chairman Liow Cai Tung said the state government was gearing up and creating lots of interesting upcoming events and packages for next year’s Visit Johor 2020.

“We are trying to pump up the online content on Johor’s tourism products and tourism sector to create an even stronger online presence.

“We want more information on Johor’s attractions to be available online through search portals and social media channels, ” she said.

Liow added that it was the state government’s aim to create more content to eliminate the frustration faced by travellers who have heard of Johor but could not find much information on the state.

“The media, whether mainstream or social platforms, play an important role as partners of the tourism industry to spread awareness and publicity on tourism products and packages to the public, ” she added.

-thestar online.