Tourism Malaysia has joined forces with Expedia Group on two tourism collaborative pacts to attract more tourists to Malaysia.
Aligned with Tourism Malaysia’s promotion strategies, the first agreement is a Memorandum of Collaboration to promote Malaysia as an outstanding tourist destination by showcasing the country’s unique wonders, attractions and cultures, as well as support tourism industry digital innovation.
In the second agreement, both parties would embark on an Expedia Media Solutions global campaign to promote inbound travel from Australia, Japan and the US to Malaysia. These three markets are the biggest points of sales for the Expedia Group, shared Greg Schulze, senior vice president, commercial strategy and services of the OTA.
Tourism Malaysia’s director general, Musa Yusof, explained that the NTO is looking to grow arrivals from Australia, Japan and the US, as visitors from this market trio are longer-staying and higher-spending. Tourism Malaysia is targeting 220,500 tourists from the three countries during the six-month campaign, due to begin this month.
Minister of tourism, arts and culture Malaysia, Mohamaddin Ketapi, said: “We believe the collaboration initiated by us, alongside all our marketing and promotional activities lined up, will firmly put Malaysia on the map of travellers everywhere and inspire them to experience the great diversity that Malaysia offers.”
The joint campaign will spotlight Malaysia’s hidden and unique tourist attractions, as well as promote a variety of accommodation to Expedia Group’s more than 750 million monthly visitors globally.
This strategic collaboration will support Malaysia’s target of achieving 30 million tourist arrivals and RM100 billion (US$24 billion) in tourist spending for the Visit Malaysia 2020 campaign.
“The joint collaboration will allow Expedia Group and Tourism Malaysia to seek and exchange traveller insights to build information gaps, deepen the understanding of tourist behaviour and strengthen tourism strategies in line with the implementation of the Visit Malaysia tourism vision,” Mohamaddin said.
As part of the overall collaboration, Tourism Malaysia and Expedia Group will also launch a series of key workshops in Malaysia to foster tourism industry digital innovation. Workshops for local hotel partners will include ways to leverage the Expedia Group’s Partner Central platform to accelerate skills development and build revenue and hotel management capabilities among local SME hotels.
Expedia Group will also tap its Partner Solutions network and technology to help both large and SME travel retailers in the offline travel industry to improve their technology capabilities and to become digital economy ready.
