Malaysia targets 4 lakh tourists from India

Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board has set itself a stiff target of getting 400,000 tourists from India in the year 2004. The board's deputy director (international promotion division), Mohamad Taib Ibrahim said that the target is very ambitious in view of the overall decline in tourist arrivals to Malaysia in 2003, thanks to Sars and the Iraq war.

However, he added that in the year 2002 India figured among the top 10 tourist generating markets for Malaysia for the first time when a little over 180,000 Indian tourists visited the country.

In order to generate more traffic out of India, the Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board has decided to focus on mega familiarisation tours. "We are concentrating on inviting travel agents as well as the entertainment media "" film industry and TV channels "" from India.

In 2004, the board expects to ferry nearly 5,000 guests for familiarisation tour of the country. Said Ibrahim: "We want to influence the decision-makers. To create more awareness about Malaysia, we are doubling the number of invitees per programme to about 1,000 people."

According to Ibrahim though the Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board spends nearly Rs 3.75 crore to Rs 5 crore in advertising in India, it prefers to use the fam tour route as it is more cost-effective.

Though Malaysia gets more tourists from Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, China and Japan than it gets from India, the board is keen to market Malaysia as a tourist destination in India as the yield from the Indian travellers is pretty attractive. Between 2000 and 2002, the yield from Indian tourists increased from Rs 248.62 crore to Rs 328.12 crore.

Besides, the Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board is looking seriously at India as it is falling way short of its target tourist arrivals this year. Ibrahim said that the Board had a target of 15 million international tourists for 2003 but it managed to get barely 7.1 million till September 2003.

However, in the year 2002 the country's travel industry saw 13.2 million tourist arrivals, up from 7.93 million in 1999. According to Ibrahim, in 2002 tourism was the second largest foreign exchange earner after manufacturing. "However, we are not sure whether tourism will be our second biggest industry this year too," he added.

(The writer was in Kuala Lumpur recently at the invitation of Malaysia Airlines)