Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
Tourism Malaysia is aggressively planning to promote the destination through a series of events lined up for 2014 as part of its Visit Malaysia Year 2014 campaign. The events are aimed to target first time travellers from tier two and tier three Indian cities. The events will consist of magical shows, Formula One event, cultural programmes, mega sales to name a few. Tourism Malaysia has collaborated with national and local hoteliers, suppliers, tour operators, airlines to promote these events.
Speaking about the events, Manoharan Periasamy, director, Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board stated, “We are packaging the 50 major events with local tour operators so that while selling the packages they can highlight the events that are taking place in that particular month. This will help us in getting more number of tourists from India. Our collaboration with tour operators and airlines are going to be key factors in promoting Malaysia.” Malindo Air, a Malaysian-based hybrid airline, which will launch its commercial flight operations from Delhi to Kuala Lumpur in February 2014 is expected to boost the number of Indian tourists into Malaysia, added Periasamy.
As part of its Visit Malaysia Year 2014 campaign, Tourism Malaysia hosted an event in December 2013 wherein it partnered with Marinating Films to promote two of its destinations – Kuala Lampur and Malacca through a telly calender which depicted 12 popular faces from the Indian television industry in exotic locations of Malaysia. “By the end of 2013, the tourism board hopes to welcome close to 7.5 lakh Indian visitors to Malaysia as against 6.9 lakh Indian visitors in 2012. By the end of 2014, they expect 15-20 per cent growth from 2013,” stated Periasamy.
