KUCHING: Tourism Malaysia is all set for the launching of Visit Malaysia 2020 (VM2020), and is harnessing digital marketing to boost promotion for the campaign.
Its director general Datuk Musa Yusof revealed that the international tourist arrivals from Jan to May this year showed a 4.8 per cent growth from 10,545,447 (2018) to 10,954,014.
“Both short (Asean) and medium haul markets were the strong performers posting increases of 4.7 per cent and 7.6 per cent arrivals respectively. Meanwhile, the long haul market saw a slight decline in arrivals (0.2 per cent) due to limited direct flights,” he said.
Sharing on the country’s overall tourism performance for the first quarter of this year (Jan until March), Musa said the tourism receipts recorded RM21.4 billion, an increase of 16.9 per cent compared to last year. There are a total of 6,696,230 tourists arrivals, an increase of 2.7 per cent compared to the same period last year.
Of the total of tourist expenses (RM21.4 billion), RM483.6 million was generated from tourists coming from United Kingdom while RM3.7 billion was from Chinese tourists and RM6.2 million from Singaporeans.
“Looking at the progress, the coming VM2020 targets to achieve 30 million tourist arrivals with expenses of RM100 billion,” he said at the Sembang Santai: “Ilek-Ilek Ngan Tourism Malaysia” attended by media, youtubers and social media influencers in conjunction with Visit Malaysia 2020 (VM2020) at Café-Café here, yesterday.
The event was organised by Tourism Malaysia to call for support from Sarawak media and social media influencers to come together with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture as well as Tourism Malaysia to make VM2020 a successful event.
According to Musa, international promotions were actively done to promote VM2020 such as through exhibitions, seminars, media trips, tactical campaigns, “online and offline” as well as social media campaigns.
“Among other early preparations include microsite, photos, music and video. This includes participation of Aswara in composing music and lyrics which will be released in four versions: English language, Malay language, Minus One and Instrumental,” he said.
For the record, the VM2020 campaign logo with the theme “Malaysia Truly Asia” will be launched tomorrow (July 22) by Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. The logo was chosen from 586 participants in a logo design competition.
