Malaysia to reignite global campaign post-MH370
Tourism Malaysia’s global promotion of Visit Malaysia Year 2014 (VMY) is expected to resume shortly as the MH370 situation becomes a “little bit more stabilised”, its deputy director general of promotions Azizan Noordin has revealed.
The global campaign, which launched in November last year, was put on hold in favour of more focused in-market promotion as the mystery of the missing flight dominated headlines and television screens from March, Noordin told Travel Today.
The TVC is expected to return to networks, including those in Australia, over the coming weeks.
Noordin was hopeful that the VMY14 push would help the destination achieve its target of 28 million international visitors this year, despite declines from a number of markets due to MH370.
“Since the incident, we’ve suffered about a 50% fall from Beijing,” he said.
Australia is the only other market to show signs of a downturn on the back of the incident, particularly from Melbourne, which Noordin attributed to the presence of six Australians on board the missing flight.
Malaysia Airlines has also reported a decline of around 15% from Australia, Noordin revealed. But he was optimistic those numbers will recover over the course of the year.
“We hope they will come back,” he said. “We want Australians to know how concerned we are about it, that we really pray for the passengers and their families.”
Political unrest in Thailand and a travel advisory placed on popular Malaysian state Sabah due to incidents of piracy and kidnapping has also impacted numbers, he added.
To ensure it stays on track to achieve its 2014 goal, the tourism body is focused on doing “more strategised” promotion in a variety of ASEAN countries such as Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei along with medium-haul destinations Korea, Japan and those in South and West Asia.
Traditional markets also remain a priority, with the destination relying on the resilience of the modern traveller – together with the importance now placed on travel – to keep visitors from those markets coming despite economic challenges.
“Take the volcano that erupted three years ago,” Noordin said. “More than 70,000 people were stranded but people still travelled.”
However, Noordin admitted that ongoing uncertainty over the future of national carrier Malaysia Airlines was “to an extent” damaging the Malaysia brand.
Amid speculation the airline may be faced with bankruptcy, Noordin stressed that many other carriers serve the destination, with Tourism Malaysia ramping up its partnerships with Middle Eastern carriers in particular.
Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au
malaysia marketing mh370 tourism tourism malaysia visit malaysia year 2014Latest News
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