PUTRAJAYA: Tourism Malaysia has inked a deal with American travel company Expedia Group which will see both sides collaborate to boost tourism promotion to Malaysia.
Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Mohamaddin Ketapi said the partnership with Expedia will help support Malaysia’s target of achieving 30 million tourist arrivals and RM100bil tourist spending by 2020.
“Malaysia has just launched its fifth instalment of the Visit Malaysia series, Visit Malaysia 2020, and this is a timely strategic partnership which will benefit all parties.
“Expedia Group, as many of you would know, has over 200 travel booking websites in more than 70 countries around the world and work with thousands of lodging and flight partners to cater to the differing needs of modern travellers today.
“This partnership will collectively promote travel to Malaysia hence helping us grow our tourism arrival and income, empower our hospitality industry to be equipped with the right tools and services to help them grow their business locally, and be seen as a beacon in the sustainable tourism space, ” said Mohamaddin in his speech at the signing ceremony of the new collaboration, held at his ministry yesterday.
Mohamaddin said one of the agreements between Tourism Malaysia and Expedia Group will be focused on several global campaigns to promote inbound travel from the United States, Australia and Japan to Malaysia.
The three countries are among the biggest points of sale for Expedia Group.
“This partnership will see a joint execution of destination marketing campaigns to spotlight Malaysia’s hidden and unique tourist attractions as well as promote the variety of accommodation to Expedia Group’s 750 million plus monthly visitors globally, ” said Mohamaddin.
The collaboration will also see Expedia Group and Tourism Malaysia exchanging traveller insights, to help better understand tourist behaviours and home tourism strategies in line with the implementation of Visit Malaysia.
Expedia Group senior vice-president of commercial strategy and services Greg Schulze said the company found Malaysia to be a “progressively thinking destination” and was committed to help expose the country to travellers around the world.
“Tourism is an important contributor to Malaysia’s economy, accounting for almost 14.9% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and 3.4 million jobs.
“As a world travel platform, Expedia Group is proud to be an online travel tourism partner to Tourism Malaysia, connecting Malaysia’s tourism industry to millions of travellers in our worldwide network, ” he said.
Among the travel websites under Expedia Group include Expedia.com, Trivago and Hotels.com.
~The Star~
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