SIA, Tourism M'sia to jointly boost tourism in Malaysia

Singapore

SINGAPORE Airlines (SIA) and Tourism Malaysia have inked their first marketing collaboration memorandum to beef up tourist flows into Malaysia under a two-year partnership.

In particular, they will focus on 14 major inbound markets, leveraging on SIA and its regional wing SilkAir which presently operates 111 weekly flights linking Singapore to five destinations in Malaysia.

The markets include the United Kingdom, Russia, the US, India, South Africa and China.

Among other things, SIA and Tourism Malaysia will tie up on advertising and promotional campaigns, as well as familiarisation programmes for travel trade and media, they said in a joint release on Thursday.

"Singapore Airlines and SilkAir together serve nearly 100 destinations in 35 countries, making us well positioned to support the development of tourism in Malaysia and the broader Asean region as a whole," said SIA's divisional vice-president (sales and marketing) Foo Chai Woo. "We look forward to offering more customers the opportunity to discover Malaysia's unique culture and heritage, as well as its world-renowned cuisine."

The memorandum, which was signed at travel trade show ITB Berlin 2016 on Wednesday, will kick off on April 1.

"Tourism Malaysia is proud to associate with Singapore Airlines to provide convenient access to the varied and unique tourist attractions of Malaysia within a short flight from Singapore," said director-general of Tourism Malaysia, Mirza Mohammad Taiyab, "in particular, Borneo (Sabah and Sarawak), Langkawi, Penang and the east coast of Malaysia."

Tourism Malaysia is an agency under Malaysia's Ministry of Tourism & Culture. In 2014, Malaysia saw 27.4 million tourist arrivals who spent RM72 billion (S$24.3 billion) in receipts. The country is seeking to grow this to 36 million tourist arrivals and RM168 billion in receipts by 2020.