Tourism industry players not keeping abreast with the times

| Last year, 25,832,354 foreigners visited Malaysia, a minuscule drop of 0.4 percent, while Singapore registered 18,506,619 tourists, a healthy increase of 6.21 percent.

And the figure was just for our capital city. We have many other destinations throughout our country, from duty-free Langkawi island in Kedah to the highest peak in Southeast Asia in Sabah. Therefore, it should be no surprise that Malaysia has more visitors than Singapore. The main reason why 7,498,460 tourists from other Asean countries visited Malaysia compared to 5,266,730 to Singapore is because of land border crossings from Thailand and Brunei.

In other words, even with our far greater variety of tourism products plus lower costs of goods and services, including much cheaper hotel rooms, we have less tourists from three Asean countries and rest of the world. Have we identified what went wrong? The drop of Singaporean visitors was mainly due to our general election last May. And if things were just as heated in the next election, their numbers will drop again and there is no way to entice them as visitors place perceived safety and security above everything else.

In today’s world where information is king and data is the new currency, the majority of local tourism industry players are not keeping abreast with the times. Many are lagging their Vietnamese counterparts who are keener to learn and embrace technology.

let's start with the simplest - Singapore has, arguably, the best airport in the world and a transportation hub for the region. Ours? I'm from Penang and I always fly through Sg simply because it's expedient and often, cheaper. MY_Airports AirAsia MAS malindoair

So what's TourismMalaysia doing to keep M'sia relevant in the global tourism industry? Here's a clue - offer better connectivity - air, land & sea. Also be friends with as many countries as possible..MKetapi MY_Airports MAS AirAsia malindoair

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