Malaysian Tourism, which has seen 6.35 lakh tourists from various places across India, now wants to attain the one million mark soon, making use of the ‘catchment’ area of Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (Shamshabad) and taking up promotional activities to attract the discerning travellers looking for religious places, rain forests, beaches or just for shopping.
A memorandum of agreement (MoA) was signed among the GMR Hyderabad International Airport, Malaysian Airports Holdings, Berhad, and Malaysian Tourism Promotion Board here on Thursday, to propel tourists from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and also from Odisha, north Karnataka, south Maharastra, towards Malaysia.
Collaborative market research, strategy development, promotional and marketing efforts were part of the tripartite agreement signed amongst SGK Kishore, GHIAL CEO, Datuk Mohd. Badlisham Ghazali, MD, MAHB, Dato Abdul Khani Daud, deputy director general (promotion) MTPB, in the presence of Dato Hidayat Abdul Hamid High Commissioner of Malaysia and others.
“Usually our tourist traffic (83%) is from Trichy and Chennai, apart from Delhi and Mumbai. We see tremendous potential in and around Hyderabad with daily direct flights, online visa and multiple-entry visas. This is yet to be tapped. We are also very proud of our partnership with the GMR airport,” said Mr. Ghazali, alluding to the 11% stake of the MAHB in the airport.
Kishore stated that they were looking at various destinations like Malayasia and other South East Asian countries like Mauritius and central European countries like Switzerland which were “four to five hours”, to facilitate hassle-free affordable travel for Indians, by collaborating with the tourism boards concerned.
“While we see a robust growth of 28% annually, there is scope for more and we are continuously looking at various destinations to provide end to end experience to the traveller. We are also looking at day connections to Malaysia as flights now are post-midnight,” he explained.
Mr. Khani Daud also spoke.
