Tourism Malaysia To Intensify

Charmaine Fernz - Mumbai

P Manoharan

With a well-established presence in the Indian market, Tourism Malaysia in the current year plans to take on a different approach to tourism promotion. Explains P Manoharan, director - India, Tourism Malaysia, "This year we plan to get more focussed on marketing activities and intensify our market segmentation. In this regard, we intend to concentrate on three main areas. Firstly, promotion of the Self-Drive packages. This would be essentially done in the metro cities, wherein travellers through these packages would get an opportunity to experience the country at their own pace. The next step is promoting Malaysia as a wedding destination. It is normally seen that Malaysia is common among honeymoon couples but we want to take that a step ahead. Currently, we are in talks with wedding planners who would go and check out the cities and the best offers in Malaysia, wherein it could be ideally promoted as a wedding destination. Of the list, we would look at Langkawi, Penang, Pangkor but it certainly does not rule out the other cities. We are also in talks with the airlines in this regard. The next offer is the home-stay programmes that would be ideally promoted as youth packages. These packages would offer visitors a cultural experience of the city and the prime targets are the BPOs and call centres. We are also in talks with certain schools."

Elaborating further Manoharan said, "Of late, there is a growing trend to focus on women travellers. In keeping with this trend, come July, we are planning to launch women specific packages. The reason for selecting the July and August months is because it is the shopping festival in Malaysia. The medium of promotion for the women packages would be through specific banks and credit card companies. For these packages, we would be working with both corporates and agents, as this medium needs to be cultivated. Subsequently, with increasing connectivity to South East Asia by Indian domestic carriers, our target for 2005 stands at 250,000 tourists. The tourists arrivals for 2004 stands at 172,000, which is around a 20 per cent growth over 2003. This we could say is healthy growth from our perspective of the Indian market and for Malaysia as a destination."