Malaysia woos Indians

Manoharan Periasamy, Senior Director, International Promotion Division (Asia & Africa), Malaysia Tourism, says they want to achieve the target of one-million tourists by 2023-24. They are also inviting Indian filmmakers to shoot movies at locations in Malaysia.

Hazel Jain

A popular personality with the Indian travel fraternity, Manoharan Periasamy, Senior Director, International Promotion Division (Asia & Africa), Malaysia Tourism, is determined to not only bring back the numbers Malaysia enjoyed from India pre-Covid, but also breach the one-million mark. Sharing details, Periasamy says, “I met local tour operators while on my visit to India to tell them that we are ready to welcome their clients. India has always been in the top four source markets for us for the last few years. As a matter of fact, we received more than 760,000 tourists from India in pre-pandemic days. Increase in Indian tourist arrivals will happen in due time. But we are confident that by 2023-24, we will achieve our objective to get more than a million tourists. We understand that a lot of them were waiting for the borders to reopen and so the potential is enormous.”

The Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board recently completed its first roadshow to six Indian cities – Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai – after more than two years.

Focus on films and weddings

The tourism board will focus on three main segments: The wedding segment, film shoots and incentives. Periasamy adds, “We will reach out to wedding planners, and couples looking to get married. Destination weddings are huge in India, so we are looking at attracting a few of them, not only to our beach resorts, but also to our new attractions and destinations, specially down south to an idyllic getaway destination called Desaru, near Singapore. We have a lot of excellent, high-end properties there such as Anantara, Westin, Hard Rock and One & Only, which will be perfect for weddings. It also has one of the biggest theme parks.”

Besides, he also wants to focus on film shoots. “Not just Bollywood, but we want Kollywood and Tollywood film producers to choose Malaysia as a shooting location. We brought in another government agency called National Film Development Corporation Malaysia or FINAS, through which we offer a lot of incentives to film producers. For instance, we have a 30 per cent rebate when you shoot in Malaysia, and the minimum spend for this is around US$ 1 million, which I think translates to maybe one song for Bollywood. If there is usage of Malaysian culture or our traditional attire, and so on, the authority will give another five per cent over and above this 30 per cent,” he shares.

He explains that promoting destinations through movies in India works well. “This is because in terms of reach, it is going to every nook and corner of the country. So, by doing this, we can reach every corner of India and promote Malaysia as a holiday destination. A couple of production houses have already shown interest and we will invite them for a reconnaissance to a number of destinations. Hopefully, by June-July some of these trips will happen for shoots in Q4 of this year,” Periasamy says.

MICE and corporate events

MICE and incentive trips are another huge segment from India to Malaysia for incentives. “For this, we have another set of incentives for these groups if they meet certain criteria. For instance, if they stay more than three nights, we give them a certain amount of financial assistance. If they stay more than five days, there are more incentives. So, we are working together with local operators in Malaysia and DMCs in India to woo corporates.”

Currently, three airlines connect India to Malaysia: Malaysian Airlines, AirAsia and Malindo Air. There are Indian airlines also such as IndiGo, Air India and Spicejet, which has shown interest in starting flights to Malaysia, Periasamy shares. “We believe that Indians will visit not more than two countries when they come to the Far East now, as against in the past when they used to combine more than three countries. They will now go mono destinations and we hope they will spend more number of days in Malaysia. We hope that their average length of stay will go up from seven pre-COVID to nine or nine-and-a-half nights in Malaysia,” he says.