VETERAN tourism industry player Lim Ba Bin’s autobiography is due out this September, with the book to be produced by inbound tour company Tour Fifty-One.

Tour Fifty-One director of sales and marketing, Mark Amir Hashim, said 2,000 copies will be published initially, some of which will be distributed to the Tourism Ministry, Tourism Malaysia and institutions of higher learning in the country.

Lim, who is in his 70s, was responsible for the formation of the Kuala Lumpur Tourist Guides Association in 1967, and co-founded the Malaysian Association of Tour & Travel Agents in 1975 with the late Low Yit Lock.

In 1969, Lim was part of the Malaysian delegation that went to Bangkok to successfully bid for the first Pacific Asia Travel Association conference in Malaysia, which was held in Kuala Lumpur in 1972.

Lim is currently the advisor to the Malaysian Inbound Tourism Association and facilitator for the Malaysia International Travel Mart Travel Fair.

SINGAPORE-based COMO Hotels and Resorts will develop and manage a new property on the Yamu peninsula of Phuket, scheduled to open in September 2012.

The property will be the ninth COMO destination, and the group’s second Thai property after the Metropolitan in Bangkok, said vice president of business development Harry Apostolides.

Located in Phang Nga Bay on Phuket’s north-east coast, 20 minutes from Phuket International Airport, the resort will offer 129 rooms with views of the cape and Andaman Sea, a 100m swimming pool, a COMO Shambhala Retreat with yoga studio, two restaurants and a private beach.

MYANMAR tourism rebounded in 2010 after three consecutive lacklustre years, with Myanmar Marketing Committee vice chairman Phyoe Wai Yar Zar describing the year as an “eventful” one for the local tourism industry.

The country recorded 295,174 foreign visitor arrivals for the year, up 29.8 per cent over 2009.

Phyoe said the brief introduction of a visa-on-arrival facility between May and August resulted in a 30 per cent increase in visitor arrivals during the three-month period alone.

“The visa-on-arrival facility would definitely help the development of tourism if we could continue to apply it,” he said.

A Yangon hotelier agreed that 2010 had been productive. “Tourism was boosted due to the many business travellers from the region. Even Yangon was facing a shortage of rooms.”

“I am sure that 2011 will be much better than 2010,” the hotelier added. “We are expecting more foreign independent travellers, business travellers and leisure travellers from Europe, the US, Australia and Scandinavia.”

According to Phyoe, all tourism-related associations, in collaboration with the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, are working together to draft an effective marketing plan for 2011, with increased engagement at international trade fairs and forums on the agenda.

ROYAL Caribbean International’s Legend of the Seas has added Malacca to her array of Asian destinations, with a maiden call there on January 9.

Its shore excursions in the Malaysian city include shopping tours, a palm oil and rubber tree plantation tour and a city tour of the Dutch Square, St. Paul’s Church and the A’Famosa where one can learn about Malacca’s Dutch and Portuguese colonial past.

The 2,074-passenger ship will also visit three new ports-of-call in Indonesia next month – Bali, Semarang and Lombok – as part of her seven-day/eight-night Bali & Semarang itinerary.

HILTON Worldwide has announced the signing of a management agreement with local property developer, Bach Dang Hotel Complex Trading Service Company, for a new Hilton Hotels & Resorts property in the central Vietnamese city of Danang.

Scheduled to open in 2013, the 226-room, new-build Hilton Da Nang is the second Hilton hotel in Vietnam after the Hilton Hanoi Opera.

The hotel is part of a large-scale mixed-use development featuring office and retail space as well as serviced apartments.

TIGER Airways commenced today daily flights between Singapore and Taipei as well as increased its Singapore-Jakarta service to a twice-daily frequency, even as its full-year report card showed solid gains in volume last year.

The low-cost carrier (LCC) recorded 5.8 million passengers for its Asian and Australian operations in 2010, a 32 per cent increase over 2009.

Average load factor for the last 12 months was 86 per cent, a year-on-year increase of two percentage points.

Tony Davis, president and group CEO of Tiger Airways Holdings, said: “We are pleased to report solid increases in our passenger numbers, whilst continuing to maintain high load factors across our network.”

The LCC launched the Partner Airline Programme last December, which saw Philippine-based South East Asian Airlines commencing services between Manila (Clark) and Singapore using two Airbus A319 aircraft leased from Tiger Airways. Tickets were distributed through www.tigerairways.com.

Over the next 12 months, the group will also take delivery of an additional nine new Airbus A320s, growing its current combined fleet of 25 aircraft by 36 per cent.

SINGAPORE-BASED Pan Pacific Hotels Group (PPHG) is continuing its expansion Down Under with the opening of its first Pan Pacific-branded property in Australia last week.

The unveiling of the 486-room Pan Pacific Perth, formerly the Sheraton Perth, follows hot on the heels of the group’s other openings in Australia.

Parkroyal Darling Harbour, Sydney and Parkroyal Parramatta were introduced late last year, while PPHG also recently entered into a conditional sale and purchase agreement to acquire the Hilton Melbourne Airport hotel, with a view to rebrand it into a Parkroyal property.

The new Pan Pacific Perth offers extensive meeting and banqueting facilities with 11 function rooms, as well as an entire level dedicated to seven boardrooms. From March, the hotel will also open its Grand Ballroom, which is currently undergoing refurbishment.

All three existing dining outlets – Origins Restaurant, Montereys Restaurant and The Lobby Lounge – have been retained.

ENCOURAGED by strong demand for bookings for Malaysia, Bangkok-based Discovery Aviation Tour and Travel (DAT) plans to grow outbound traffic by leveraging on Firefly’s flights to Thailand.

DAT, a joint venture between Bangkok-based CBS Travel Asia and Kuala Lumpur-based Discovery Overland Holidays, was appointed airline marketing representative for Firefly in Thailand from mid-last year.

The airline operates four-times-weekly flights for Kuala Lumpur-Koh Samui and Penang-Phuket routes.

Although the flights attract mainly incoming Malaysians, expats and tourists into Thailand, bookings from Thais, expats and tourists in Phuket and Koh Samui represent “significant” numbers, said CBS Travel Asia CEO Chaladol Ussamarn.

Chaladol said Firefly’s competitive airfares and full-fledged service appealed to outbound travellers from the Thai islands.

To enhance its marketing, DAT is looking to hire a sales representative, a reservation officer and a travel consultant.

By Sirima Eamtako

RIAU provincial government-owned airline Riau Air, which launched thrice-weekly commercial services between capital city Pekanbaru and Malacca last weekend, is aiming to connect cities within the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) as it grows its fleet.

Riau governor Rusli Zainal was quoted by the media as saying: “We are planning to add at least 10 more aircraft by the end of this year to enable (Riau Air) to serve not only domestic routes but also intra-regional city routes.”

The airline currently has one leased Boeing 737-500 124-seat aircraft which plies the Pekanbaru-Malacca, Pekanbaru-Tanjung Pinang and Tanjung Pinang-Natuna routes.

Pekanbaru-Malacca used to be served on a charter basis with the Fokker 50, and the airline is targeting a 70 per cent load factor in the first year with this new commercial service.

Riau Air president director Teguh Triyanto told TTG Asia e-Daily: “We would like to position Riau Air as a bridge between cities in the IMT-GT area. We are considering Subang and Ipoh as our next destinations in Malaysia, and a number of cities in Thailand.”

Grand Anoa Tours and Travel Pekanbaru tour manager Samsul Basar said: “I think the potential inbound market from Malacca is the meeting and incentive market as Pekanbaru has the facilities, apart from business and golf.”

FIREFLY’S Boeing 737-800 aircraft will commence services to South-east Asian destinations out of Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in the third quarter of 2012.

Managing director Eddy Leong said the airline was looking at routes that were within six hours’ flight time.

The carrier, which has been operating with ATR 72-500 turboprops out of Subang Airport, will launch twice-daily flights from KLIA to Kota Kinabalu and Kuching this Saturday. This will increase to thrice daily for Kota Kinabalu and four times daily for Kuching from January 24.

Firefly would have 13 B737-800s by 2012, up from two now, and by 2015, this would grow to 30 or more.

At a recent press conference, Leong guaranteed airfares would be at least 10 per cent lower than that of its rival, AirAsia.

A random check on the websites of both airlines for airfares from Kuala
Lumpur to Kuching showed that AirAsia’s lowest fare for February 8 was RM223 (US$73), whereas Firefly’s lowest fare was RM148.95.

PYOTravel.com senior manager, operations management, John Chan said pricing was the most important factor for attracting leisure tourists, while business travellers were influenced by flight times.

Leong added that Firefly had plans to set up secondary bases for its B737-800 aircraft in Penang, Kota Kinabalu and Kuching as this would help improve rotation times and schedules.