EAGER to boost its overall tourism industry performance and improve average occupancies in four- and five-star hotels, the Malaysian state of Selangor is looking to strengthen its positioning as a business events destination.
In an interview with TTGmice e-Weekly, Selangor Tourism general manager, Noorul Ashikin Mohd Din, revealed that the bureau is targeting business event groups from Australia, the Middle East and regional markets.
Included in Selangor Tourism’s action plans is an updated business events directory which will be ready by end of this year. The directory will provide a listing of meetings, accommodation venues and attractions in the state, among other details.
MICE hardware will improve through the launch of a new convention centre in Selangor’s Shah Alam by 4Q2014. Ideal Convention Centre will be the largest venue of its kind in the state. Spread across 8,674.4m2, the venue will comprise 11 halls in four different sizes. It will be able to accommodate up to 8,000 guests.
Ideal Convention Centre will join two other private venues that had opened in Shah Alam in recent years. The latest is Midlands Convention Centre which opened last month in Section 7, Shah Alam. The purpose-built venue can host up to 2,500 people in theatre set-up. The other is Setia City Convention Centre which started operations in late 2012.
Also keen to court business events, especially those from Indonesia and the Philippines, is i-City Properties which has added new attractions to its i-City theme park. According to the company’s sales manager, leisure division, Norsyuhaini Mohd, a Best Western hotel will open within the theme park by the last quarter of the year.
Saini Vermeulen, head of international sales, Panorama Tours Malaysia, said the new event spaces would provide more options for meetings and noted that events hosted in Selangor would cost some 30 per cent lower than the same in nearby Kuala Lumpur.
“(Selangor’s) lower prices are especially attractive to the price-sensitive regional markets,” he said.
Sachin Bansal, director of ABS Holidays in Delhi, said: “With Malindo Air’s new Delhi-Kuala Lumpur flights, we anticipate MICE demand to Malaysia to pick up significantly this year. Thus, it would be helpful if Selangor Tourism could keep us updated with new product developments.”
