INDONESIA and Malaysia have come together to leverage each other’s expertise in developing Muslim-friendly products to draw more Muslim travellers to both destinations.
The way forward for this collaboration was discussed at a bilateral meeting between the two tourism ministries during the 43rd ASEAN NTO Meeting on Monday.
I Gde Pitana, deputy minister for international tourism marketing development, Indonesia Ministry of Tourism, highlighted a number of reasons backing the collaboration.
Pitana said: “First, although Indonesia is made up of predominantly Muslims, we still get enquiries from Malaysian Muslim travellers on whether we have halal products. The cooperation is expected to raise confidence in Indonesia as a friendly destination among these travellers.
“Secondly, Malaysia has managed to attract millions of Middle Eastern visitors while Indonesia is only getting a few hundred thousands. Middle-Eastern travellers have a month-long summer holiday and they spend an average of 10 days in Malaysia. We would like to get them to spend more time in South-east Asia by extending their stay in Indonesia.”
Ong Hong Peng, secretary general of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture Malaysia, said the collaboration seeks to “find a common ground and share experience” to “strengthen each other”.
“We will start off with having common Muslim-friendly packages that will meet the expectations of Muslim tourists.”
Both ministries have identified the Middle Eastern market as a target, but will also court other sources.
A series of technical meetings involving travel trade players will follow the ministerial-level bilateral meeting on Monday.
Hamzah Rahmat, president of the Malaysia Association of Tour & Travel Agents (MATTA), welcomes the initiative and told The Daily that “Indonesia Ministry of Tourism has already taken steps (to involve the trade) by inviting inbound operators to provide product updates on Batam”, so as to create combined packages incorporating Malaysia and Indonesia products.
Hamzah added that the Indonesian ministry will work with MATTA to conduct more fam trips to Jogjakarta, Surabaya and Padang this year.
Elly Hutabarat, PanTravel Indonesia president, said: “Developing a joint product between Indonesia and Malaysia is in line with the spirit of developing ASEAN as a single destination. We can start from (bilateral cooperation) and grow from there.”
Read more ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF) 2016 stories in the digital edition of our Show Dailies here.
