Tourism Malaysia banks on digital push
Tourism Malaysia is embarking on a comprehensive digitalisation journey to promote Malaysia and tap Chinese inbound tourist market via Mafengwo, a China travel services and social networking platform.
Chan Hon Mun, Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board deputy director for international promotion division (Asia/Africa), said “smart tourism” would be a key thrust to boost tourism-based receipts, especially from growing independent travellers.
“China is our third largest tourist market after Singapore and Indonesia.
“With Mafengwo’s collaboration with Malaysia tourism partners, there is an opportunity to grow our share of China market from 2.94 million tourist arrivals to a potential target of 3.48 million next year, in conjunction with the Visit Malaysia 2020 (VM2020) campaign,” he said after the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Mafengwo and Adfinity Media Sdn Bhd, here, yesterday.
Chan said Mafengwo can help increase tourist arrivals from China by providing a platform and a digital ecosystem for Malaysian partners to reach out to 1.4 billion Chinese population.
“Last year, 2.94 million Chinese tourists visited Malaysia, which was a 29 per cent increse. They contributed RM12.3 billion to national economy,” he added.
Meanwhile, Mafengwo senior vice-president Yu Zhuo said the company was keen to assist Malaysian tourism industry players by creating a richer online content for Chinese travellers.
She said Mafengwo’s 1.3 million users had been sharing their own experiences, travel tips and guides based on their trips to Malaysia.
“Malaysia has always been one of the most popular tourism destinations. With the emergence of individualised demand from users, Mafengwo will employ a point of interest system to perform content customisation aimed at providing tourists from China better services while establishing opportunities for merchants in Malaysia,” she said.
In conjunction with the event, the company had selected seven distinguished local merchants comprising restaurants, tourist attractions and accommodation providers as “Mafengwo Users’ Top Pick”.
The National Mosque, here, was named as one of Mafengwo’s tourism icon winners as it had received high ratings from its app users.