MALAYSIA: Malaysia's Tourism Industry Urged To Adopt New Technology To Attract Tourists

Malaysia's tourism industry needs to adopt new technology to attract tourists, said an integrated amusement park solutions and services provider.

London Stock Exchange-listed Galasys PLC said as consumers get savvier, the tourism industry needs to leverage on new technology to revamp the traditional approaches to attract tourists.

"There is a marked rise in the investment in digital channels and computerisation among Asian theme park operators. However, on the Malaysian front, investments have been rather slow due to the new Goods and Services Tax and weaker currency," the Malaysia-based company said in a statement yesterday.

According to Tourism Malaysia, tourist numbers dropped 9.4% between January and June this year, with 12.56 million foreign visitors recorded during this period compared to 13.87 million in the same period in 2014.

Arrivals from China was the worst hit, falling from 520,400 during January to March last year to 380,000 (-28.5%) in the same period this year.

Galasys said the average Chinese tourist rarely travelled beyond Kuala Lumpur, Genting Highlands and Malacca, due to the language barrier and lack of an easy method to book packages across the country.

It felt the Malaysian Tourism industry needs to look into changing the way it promotes Malaysia to the world.

"While tourism ads may have been successful in the past, it seems to be less effective with today's Internet driven tourist," it added.

Galasys said leveraging on the success of its Intelligent Tourism Cloud Marketing Platform (ITCMP) in China, it intends to invest and deploy it in Malaysia and other Asian cities.

ITCMP integrates big-data analytics to allow tourists in China to choose attractions, restaurants, accommodation, shopping, transportation, entertainment and more, from one integrated platform which they can easily pay for via their favourite online travel agency (OTA) or payment gateway.

MALAYSIA: Top Destinations For Foreigners And Malaysians

Kuala Lumpur is still tops when it comes to tourists to Malaysia. Other local destinations that are also popular among inbound holidaymakers are Penang, Langkawi, Kota Kinabalu and Malacca. Johor Baru, Kuching, Cameron Highlands, Genting Highlands and Ipoh round off the Top 10.

This were the findings of the online accommodation booking website Hotels.com Hotel Price Index (HPI). The report is published twice a year and is based on bookings made on Hotels.com sites, and prices shown are those actually paid by customers on a per room/per night basis including taxes and fees, rather than advertised rates. Local travel trends and insights are also extrapolated from the report.

Overall, travellers were paying an average of RM306 per night for hotels in Malaysia in the first half of 2015. Among all travellers from Switzerland were spending the most (RM 425) on average hotel price paid in Malaysia, followed by Norway (RM402), United Kingdom (RM391), and two Asian countries – Hong Kong (RM381) and South Korea (RM378).

“We believe that the recent softening of the ringgit clearly has an impact on local destinations. Subsequently, Malaysians are also noticeably getting back to their roots when it comes to planning vacations,” said Hotels.com senior marketing director Asia Pacific Nelson Allen.

It is also surprising that according to the trends seen for hotel searches for next year by Malaysians for local destinations, the fourth most searched destination is Port Dickson! It registered three-digit figures in percentage growth.

The softening of the ringgit doesn’t necessarily mean a higher cost of travel. The HPI also revealed that there was a steady drop in hotels prices paid by Malaysians in the United Arab Emirates (36%), France (21%), Macau (12%), as well as Malaysians’ all time favourite – Thailand (7%), Indonesia (12%), Singapore (18%), and Hong Kong (4%). This could be attributed to more Malaysians using online and mobile applications for their travel planning.

Top destinations for Malaysian travellers

1. Bangkok
2. Singapore
3. Bali
4. Hong Kong
5. Phuket
6. Melbourne
7. Krabi
8. Seoul
9. Tokyo
10. Taipei