Malaysia’s Minister of Tourism and Culture, Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz will make a sales mission to Sri Lanka and India to further increase tourist arrivals from this region as part of the Visit Malaysia Year (VMY) 2014 programme.

The 10-day mission starting March 10 will cover Colombo in Sri Lanka and four cities namely Kochi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi in India.

“The mission is mainly to drum up Visit Malaysia Year 2014 as well as Malaysia Year of Festival in 2015,” Tourism Malaysia’s Director in New Delhi, Amran Abdul Rahman said.

The Year of Festival was announced during the Budget last year, which is expected to generate more revenue and attract more tourists to Malaysia. Nazri would be accompanied by top officials from the Ministry, travel agents as well as hoteliers.

Tourism Malaysia’s Drector-General, Datuk Mirza Mohammad Taiyab is also part of the mission.

In both Sri Lanka and India, he is scheduled to meet key travel operators, among others the Travel Agent Association of Sri Lanka, IATA Association as well as travel bloggers and media personnel, Amran told Bernama in an interview.

“We are seeing good response from both Sri Lanka and India for the mission,” he said, adding that in all the places there would also be cultural performances by Istana Budaya.

Besides VMY promotion, the mission is also aimed at further deepening bilateral relationship among the countries through culture and heritage, said Amran.

Malaysia aims to attract 28 million tourists and earn RM76 billion in tourism revenue through VMY.
Last year, tourist arrivals grew by 2.7% to 25.7 million arrivals as compared with 25 million arrivals in 2012.

It contributed RM51.5 billion to the Gross National Income (GNI) in 2013.

India was among the top 10 tourist generating markets with 650,989 arrivals last year. – Bernama