Tourism Malaysia To Attract More Tourists From Singapore With Promotional Activities.

Date: 14 January 2013

Tourism Malaysia To Attract More Tourists From Singapore With Promotional Activities.

SINGAPORE (Bernama) - In its quest to attract more tourists from Singapore, Tourism Malaysia has identified various promotional programmes for this year. These include participation in consumer fairs, trade and meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) seminars and food promotions, said the new Tourism Malaysia director for Singapore, Noor Aine Ismail.

"At this juncture, we will implement the identified promotional programmes for 2013, approved by our headquarters," said Noor Aine who has been working with Tourism Malaysia for 33 years.

"Singapore is a major tourist-generating market for Malaysia (54.1 per cent of total arrivals in 2011). We foresee a positive development, based on contributing factors such as the favourable exchange rate, making Malaysia a value-for- money destination," she told Bernama.

Due to the close proximity, she said Malaysia was an ideal weekend getaway, and coupled with affordable/cheap airfares offered by many low-cost carriers, the country offered different kinds of tourism products for all market segments.

Noor Aine noted that Singapore tourist arrivals showed a drop of 5.1 per cent (9,257,587) for January-September 2012 (compared to the same period in 2011). "We believe the 'decline' was due to the change in recording system by the Immigration Department, whereby from January 2012, arrivals were recorded by 'nationality' and no more by 'country of residence'. Hence, a large number of arrivals of expatriates and foreigners (living in Singapore) lost out to their respective countries of origin/nationality."

However, she said, with the upcoming promotional activities coupled with the Visit Malaysia 2014 campaign, Malaysia hoped to get three to five per cent increase in tourist arrivals.

Noor Aine took over the new post from Zalizam Zakaria early this month. Before this, she had been assigned to various divisions - Project Development, Marketing, Conventions and Industry Development. She had served at the Tourism Malaysia Paris Office from November 1994 to July 2000. From October 2007 to Jan 4, 2013, she was deputy director (overseeing Tourism Malaysia's offices in Frankfurt, The Hague, Milan, Moscow and Istanbul) at the International Marketing Division (Americas/Europe and Oceania).

By Tengku Noor Shamsiah Tengku Abdullah

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