Tengku Adnan promised to bring 20.1 million tourists in 2007

I am attracted to this article, not because it is related to the development of tourism industry in Malaysia, but because of the target and promise made by the 'recycled' Cabinet Minister, Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, the newly appointed Cabinet Minister to hold the portfolio of tourism in the jumbo-size cabinet. Tengku Adnan has set himself a target of bringing 20.1 million tourists to Malaysia in year 2007, which will be set as Visit Malaysia Year with promotion emphasis be put in ASEAN countries.

Of course, he should be commended for setting such a target to boast tourism in Malaysia and we have no way to check this figure not until year 2008.

Instead of trying hard to memorise this figure so that readers of this blog and I are able to ask him whether the target has been achieved in 2008, provided that he is still the Tourism Minister, I think it will be better to blog it here. And below is what is reported in the Star.

Ministry aims to bring in 20.1 million tourists
By IZATUN SHARI

KUALA LUMPUR: Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor has set himself a target of bringing in 20.1 million tourists to Malaysia, generating an income of RM44.5bil next year, which is also Visit Malaysia Year 2007.

To achieve the target, he said, the ministry would intensify promotion efforts, including organising familiarisation trips involving the media and tour operators to potential markets overseas to promote Malaysia, re-branding tourism programmes in the country to further tap the China market, and setting up a team to counter negative reports about the country by the foreign press.

“We are going to push tourist arrivals to a record 20.1million next year,” he told reporters after the handing over of duties by former Tourism Minister Datuk Dr Leo Michael Toyad at Menara Datuk Onn here yesterday.

This year, he said, the ministry had set a target of getting 17.5 million tourist arrivals to generate income of RM37.6bil.

“We are looking at Asean as one of our key areas. We want to promote Malaysia in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines as people there are earning more, and can afford to travel.”

On how the ministry plans to re-brand Malaysia to attract tourists from China, he said the ministry would enhance spiritual tourism to attract tourists from China.

“We will revise the tourism programmes to include areas the Chinese would want to visit. For instance, we can include Kek Lok Si temple in Penang rather than just take tourists to Malacca to see the legacy of Laksamana Cheng Ho,” he said, adding that the ministry would have to make the programmes more attractive to compete with at least 100 other countries which saw China as a huge potential market for tourism.

Asked about programmes for Visit Malaysia 2007, he said: “We already have what we are supposed to do on paper. We have launched a logo to promote Malaysia overseas and are adding ‘50 glorious years of nationhood’ to the tagline, and an advertisement blitz on Malaysia 50 years ago and now, capitalising on the multi-racial and multi-ethnic society.”

Tengku Adnan said he was confident that the team set up to counter negative reports about the country would be able to project an accurate image instead.

“We are quite worried about the negative reports by the foreign press. Some countries have come up with negative reports telling people not to use credit cards in Malaysia to avoid cloning,” he said.

“I would like to appeal to retailers not to give out credit card numbers to unscrupulous people to avoid such incidents.”