Malaysian Inbound Tourism Association president Uzaidi Udanis said local tourism players must work together and push for more aggressive marketing strategies to attract more tourists.
This was a reduction from the previous year's RM1.6bil aimed at reviving the sector due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Uzaidi said that to woo more tourists, the government should also introduce visa-on-arrivals for some countries, suggesting that tourists from China, India and Russia be accorded this facility.
While Malaysia is on par with Indonesia and Singapore in terms of tourist arrivals, he said the country is still behind Thailand.“It’s not enough for any significant tourism infrastructure upgrades or development. “We need a purpose-driven supplementary budget that will enable local tourism stakeholders to acquire resources, upgrade service infrastructure and develop new products.
“The budget allocated for the tourism sector was mainly for infrastructure upgrading. We need marketing and promotions allocations, too, and better incentives to get tourism players to be involved in promoting our products,” she said.