After closing its office a few years ago, Tourism Malaysia is now back to Istanbul, as the country is embarked into an intense promotion around the world for its Visit Malaysia Year 2014.
KUALA LUMPUR – Minister of Tourism and Culture, Dato’ Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, officiated the re-opening of Tourism Malaysia’s office in Istanbul on October 30. The Minister performed the official ceremony during a nine-day working visit to Europe. He started with Istanbul and Bucharest before arriving yesterday at World Travel Market 2013 in London.
Malaysian tourism minister officiated the re-opening of Tourism Malaysia’s Istanbul office at the Harmanci Giz Plaza, on October 30 in the morning before attending the Visit Malaysia Year 2014 (VMY) Evening to promote the VMY 2014 campaign to Turkish tour operators and media.
“The Istanbul office, last operational in 2009, will oversee the Turkish, Armenian, Romanian, Azerbaijani, and Bulgarian tourist markets to Malaysia,” said the Minister.
He said the move is expected to increase tourist arrivals from Turkey, by tapping into the growing outbound market, which showed a 3% growth last year, with a forecasted 40 million departures by 2017.
“This year, Tourism Malaysia estimates that a total of 10,300 Turkish tourists will be visiting Malaysia, an increase from last year’s figures of 9,909. The figure is expected to increase to 11,000 tourists next year, during the VMY 2014 campaign,” he added.
Currently, there are no visa requirements between Turkey and Malaysia, and air accessibility has improved with 7,238 weekly flights servicing the Istanbul – Kuala Lumpur route, through direct and indirect flights on Turkish Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, KLM, Air France and Qatar Airways.
Malaysia fourth edition of its “Visit Malaysia Year” in 2014 will promote the theme “Celebrating 1Malaysia Truly Asia”. The VMY 2014 promotional campaign started earlier this year with a series of year-long special events and activities leading to VMY 2014. It will contribute to the Government’s target to receive 36 million tourist arrivals and RM168 billion in receipts by 2020, as outlined in the Malaysia Tourism Transformation Plan (MTTP) 2020.
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
