RM100b tourism revenue goal for VMY
Published on: Thursday, July 04, 2019
By: Lorena Binisol
Kota Kinabalu: At least 30 million arrivals and RM100 billion in tourist receipts is the target to achieve in the coming Visit Malaysia Year 2020, Datuk Musa Yusof, Director General of Tourism Malaysia said at the Digital Influencers’ Convention farewell dinner at Shangrila’s Rasa Ria Resort in Tuaran, recently.
He recapped on the 2018 updates on Malaysia tourism news where it recorded 25.8 million international tourist arrivals with tourist receipts amounting to RM84.1 billion achieved. He said this was realised due to the strategic initiatives and promotional efforts by all concerns, he said.
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“Tourism Malaysia has doubled up efforts for local and international promotions since early 2018 and we are still doubling up further to realise our target. And some of initiatives are the following:
Optimising the use of information and communication technology where it helps in the engaging approach in promotion, publicity and advertising efforts.
As for domestic and international promotional work, the ‘VisitMalaysia2020 and #vm2020 have been widely used.
A website for Visit Malaysia 2020 and the winning logo would soon be materialised on this platform. We are also maximising our social media platform throughout our networks overseas, and thirdly, social media being the best platform for promoting Malaysia, photos and videos uploaded by tourists had made great impact in tourism promotion.
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As at June 20, 2019 we have 3.3 million Facebook followers, 72,877 Instagram followers, 422,489 Twitter followers and 45.6 million views on YouTube.
Please like us on social media and hashtag your photos or videos with hashtag Malaysia Truly Asia, hashtag VM2020 and hashtag Visit Malaysia 2020,” he said to the audience, among others were 54 social media influencers from India.
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The event was hosted by Tourism Malaysia seen as an excellent chance to demonstrate the calibre as a business and crucial towards boosting tourist arrivals and receipts, he added.
Musa disclosed that in that first quarter of this year, Malaysia recorded a positive growth of 16.9pc to reach RM21.4 billion in tourist expenditure.
Tourist arrivals showed an increase of 2.7pc with a total of 6,696,230 tourists.
“The average length of stay in Malaysia for the first quarters also showed improvement of 1.8 nights from 4.2 nights in 2018 to 6.0 nights in 2019,” he said.
He revealed that Malaysia had received a total of 157, 690 Indian tourists in the first quarter of this year, registering an increase of 18.6pc.
He was pleased to disclose that a few agencies had been set up such as MyCEB, the Malaysian Convention and Exhibition Bureau to facilitate and help in organising future events. The target for Indian market this year is to receive 283,000 tourists, he added.
“Coupled with our world class facilities and our multitude of tourist attractions, Malaysia is certainly one of the best business destinations within the region,” said Musa.
It was jointly organised by Sabah Tourism Board and Travel Earth India which had materialised visit by 54 social influencers from India to Sabah.
It also coincided with their Earthy Award ceremony commemorating achievements attained in various categories as online influencers.
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