ARE local tourism industry players working in silos?

Yes, going by the lack of quantity and quality in fruitful engagement sessions between the public and private sectors, academia and industry, and among the dozens of tourism associations.

Sharing of information is at best ad hoc. Hence, the majority of travel trade players are limited to their own perspectives and can be clueless to what is going on in the regional tourism markets.

An example of this is international tourist arrivals, which is a good indicator for inbound tourism for any country. Recently, a market intelligence company based in Vietnam released the January-February 2023 updates for Southeast Asia.

In January, Thailand led the pack with 2,144,948 arrivals followed by Singapore (931,650), Vietnam (871,162), Indonesia (735,947), Philippines (464,168) and Cambodia (402,943). 

In February, only figures from three countries were available. They were Singapore (957,610), Vietnam (932,969) and Philippines (466,032).

Four countries were not included in the updates. They were Malaysia, Laos, Myanmar and Brunei, as no published figures were available. 

Last year, I had projected that tourist arrivals to Malaysia in 2023 would average 1.5 million per month. This was achieved ahead of time in the last quarter of 2022 when results were later published.

Until Visit Malaysia Year 2014, our country attracted the largest number of international tourists to Southeast Asia but surrendered the crown to Thailand from 2015. Since then, we have remained number two, but for how long?

Even before March has ended, Thailand announced that it has surpassed the target of six million arrivals in the first quarter, hitting 6.15 million from January 1 to March 27. The Thai government is expecting 25 to 30 million arrivals for the full year.

In January, Tourism Malaysia (TM) targeted 15.6 million tourist arrivals for 2023. In February, the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry (Motac) revised the figure to 16.1 million arrivals and RM49.2 billion revenue.

But why the lack of urgency in releasing monthly statistics of tourist arrivals? With computerisation, entry and exit figures can be easily generated by pressing a few buttons.

If that is done on the first day of every month, the Immigration Department could distribute the information to other government agencies such as Motac and TM.

Over the years, TM has released the figures for tourist arrivals on a quarterly basis and more than three months late. For example, the first quarter performance is only released in early July.

Before their release, the numbers must first be tabled in a cabinet meeting.

Unless the figures need to be massaged to look better, there is no need for such delays. Monthly figures ought to be released within two weeks and tourism players must be more proactive.

Instead of merely posting the figures on the TM website, there should be monthly engagements with industry players to share the latest developments and hear concerns or complaints.

All travel and tour companies must be a member of at least one of the seven travel associations approved by Motac. It may be expedient to engage only with these associations and not with too many individual industry players, but the method is not foolproof. It has many inherent weaknesses as displayed by the lack of professionalism and knowledge among many tour operators, who show a lack of desire to learn and develop, or at least keep abreast regional competitors.

In 2007, I conducted training on tourism policy for a large group of Vietnamese tourism and provincial leaders in Kuala Lumpur for a two-month programme funded by the European Union.

In 2016, I met one of the Vietnamese participants in Langkawi to attend a three-week programme to qualify as an Asean tourism master trainer.

The Vietnamese people are not just industrious, they are also hungry for success and have a thirst to learn. They have rapidly built up a strong ecosystem that provides useful knowledge and regular training to support the growth of their tourism industry.

In contrast, most tour operators in Malaysia are working in silos and lacking in understanding of the fundamentals. Many are unclear on the number of inbound tourists, where they come from and how they spend their money. – March 30, 2023.

* Y.S. Chan reads The Malaysian Insight.
 

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.