VISIT Canberra, which has focused its tourism efforts on the domestic market in the last decade, is now reaching out to court Malaysian travellers for the first time, with its first trade mission to capital city Kuala Lumpur last week.
The tourism board, along with several local players including East Hotel, Balloon Aloft Canberra, Pialligo Estate and Canberra Airport, made the fact finding mission to learn more about the Malaysian market and to network with outbound travel agents in Malaysia.
Visit Canberra’s director, Ian Hill, described Malaysia as a “significant market which has a lot of repeat visitors to Australia” and has plans for more regular sales trips to Malaysia and to organise familiarisation trips for Malaysian travel consultants and the media to Canberra.
However, with the absence of direct international flights, Hill said he hopes to “promote Canberra as a stopover destination with the main entry points being Sydney and Melbourne”.
Sedunia Travel in Malaysia currently sells Canberra as a day tour and as part of a Sydney programme.
The agency’s sales manager, e-commerce division, Terry Teo, told TTG Asia e-Daily that “with support from Visit Canberra, it is possible to develop more than one-day itineraries to Canberra”.
Tourism Australia’s statistics revealed Malaysia to be the second largest arrival market to Australia after Singapore. For the first eight months of 2015, Malaysian arrivals totalled 207,000 as compared to 203,000 for the corresponding period in 2014.
