Malaysia Ministry of Tourism shifts market focus for Visit Malaysia 2020

The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture (MOTAC) will be restructuring its Visit Malaysia 2020 (VM2020) campaign to focus on new markets, according to Bernama. This comes after MOTAC witnessing a significant drop in the number of tourists coming from the China after the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.

Quoting MOTAC's minister Datuk Mohammadin Ketapi, Bernama reported that the new markets MOTAC is looking at include European countries, Australia, Middle East, Central Asia, Russia and East Asia. Kepati added that MOTAC is ready to discuss with Malaysia Airlines, Malindo and AirAsia to explore new travel routes to the new markets. Meanwhile in Southeast Asia, Ketapi said MOTAC has come up with a "Quick Win" strategy for its neighbouring ASEAN member countries as an alternative campaign to restore the country’s tourism.

According to Bernama, Kepati said MOTAC will be organising a town hall from 10 February onwards "in several states" to get industry players' input on "ways to restore the tourism sector". He added that discussions with the Selangor, Penang, Johor, and Sabah state governments are also ongoing to come up with "the best solution to restore tourism" in those states. In the mean time, Bernama reported that Tourism Malaysia is shifting its focus to strengthen its "Cuti-Cuti Malaysia" promotional campaign activities to boost domestic tourism. A+M has reached out for additional comments. Kepati told Bernama that tourists from China made up 11% of tourist arrivals in 2018.

Just late last year, Tourism Malaysia partnered with Mafengwo, a Chinese travel and leisure information platform, to promote the country and target the Chinese inbound tourist market. According to New Straits Times, Tourism Malaysia was looking to increase its share of the China market from 2.94 million tourist arrivals to its target of 3.48 million in 2020 via Mafengwo’s digital platform.

Tourism Malaysia has rolled out different initiatives over the past few months for its VM2020 campaign. This includes creating a new VM2020 logo, and featuring a "insta-worthy" section powered by user-generated content on its new website in a bid to attract Millennials. Tourism Malaysia also partnered technology company Xiaomi to boost global tourism. The partnership sees both parties jointly creating photography shots in several scenic spots in Malaysia through Xiaomi’s smartphone Mi Note 10, and a promotional video for the VM2020 campaign.

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